This Never Happened
by SpaceTimeConundrum
Summary: When the TARDIS lands on an unknown planet the Doctor and Rose find themselves caught in a mystery, one that means everything for them will change in an instant... or not at all. Rated T for mild language, implied adult situations.
1. Blue Dust

_Continuity Note: Takes place after Fear Her and before Army of Ghosts_

* * *

**This Never Happened**

* * *

The Doctor drew a deep breath and willed himself to take the final step towards the device. If he did this, if it worked, then none of this would ever have happened. It'd be wiped clean from existence, and no one would ever know the difference. Well, he might. But she wouldn't and he'd rather not remember at all than look into her eyes and see none of what they'd shared together reflected back at him. If he made it out alive, he'd lock the memories away, let them join the worst of the Time War in the dark corners of his mind where he stuffed everything that hurt too much to know.

There wasn't any way around it though. It had to be done. His feelings weren't more important than the safety of the entire universe.

He stepped forward and triggered the device.

* * *

The TARDIS shook as the Doctor stumbled madly around the centre console, trying to regain control of their flight. Rose clung tightly to a railing to keep from being thrown across the room as he worked.

"Just a bit of turbulence! Nothing to worry about," he attempted to reassure her just as several alarms sounded around them. "Oh, that's not supposed to happen!"

He managed to grasp hold of the lever he'd been reaching for and wrenched it downward. The TARDIS gave one last shudder and settled with a disconcertingly final sounding noise. They held still for a second, sharing a concerned look as they waited to be sure the machine had finished landing. Just as Rose was about to break the silence and ask him what happened, the Doctor snapped back into action and hurried over to the view screen.

"That's odd," he muttered, pulling out his glasses.

"What is?" Rose came up behind him to peer at the screen.

"I have no idea where we are. The TARDIS isn't even showing proper coordinates for this place. If that number is correct," he tapped at a nine digit figure fluctuating on the monitor, "then we ought to be in deep space. But we're not. There's a planet with an atmosphere and near-Earth gravity outside right now. And that number," he indicated another, "that number doesn't even make sense in real space!"

He straightened and took a step back to look from the confusing readout to the TARDIS doors. "She's picking up a rather peculiar energy signature not far from here, maybe that's throwing off the sensors?" This last statement came out as more of a question.

The Doctor retrieved his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and tilted his head towards the door. "Fancy a stroll on an uncharted planet to investigate?" he asked.

"I'll get my coat." Rose replied with a grin.

The surface outside was remarkably blue. The ground beneath their feet appeared to be primarily rock, cracked with millions of fine fissures and small impact craters, as though the planet had been heavily blasted with tiny meteorites. Bluish-grey dirt or sand lay around in patchy drifts and whipped about them in the vigorous wind. The temperature was cool and the air felt very dry.

Rose began coughing as a gust blew some sand directly in her face. The Doctor stepped back inside the TARDIS for a moment and returned bearing a pink bandana and goggles for her to wear. He pulled a second pair down over his own eyes and wrapped what seemed to be an excessively long striped scarf over his nose and mouth. When they finished protecting themselves from the dust, Rose took the Doctor's offered hand and they ventured out into the alien landscape, following the mysterious energy signature.

With all the dust in the air, it was difficult to distinguish between the ground and the sky or even really see all that far ahead on the horizon. With concern, Rose noted that they had lost sight of the TARDIS behind them and had to remind herself that the Doctor was unlikely to lose track of his ship entirely because of a simple dust storm. The high winds made conversation extremely difficult; Rose hoped that whatever they were looking for was both nearby and sheltered from the elements.

Before too long, they came upon a row of great dark pillars spaced evenly a short distance apart and continuing on into the distance to the left and right as far as they could see like enormous fence posts. The Doctor stopped short to examine them with an increasingly alarmed expression on his face. He switched the settings on his sonic and scanned the nearest pillar again. Something suddenly felt very, very wrong here.

The energy signature was most definitely originating from the pillars, but how exactly, he couldn't figure out. Beyond the energy emissions, they were opaque to his scans, giving no indication of their inner workings at all. Far, far more worrisome though was the effect this place was having on his time senses. He felt close to suffocation and vaguely nauseous as the timelines around him seemed to twist and writhe. The closer he got to the pillars, the worse it got. They needed to leave. Now.

He turned to find Rose approaching one of the pillars and yelled to her to stop. She turned and hurried over to him when she saw his panicked expression.

"What's wrong?" she asked, shouting to make herself heard over the wind.

The Doctor didn't get a chance to answer her though. He was interrupted by a powerful low frequency hum that built up around them, resonating from the pillars and shaking the ground beneath their feet. His Time Lord senses screamed at him in alarm and he clutched at his head in pain as he struggled to remain standing. The last thing he recalled before he blacked out was seeing Rose fall to the ground with her hands over her ears.


	2. The City That Time Forgot

**Chapter 2**

The Doctor woke to find himself lying in small, dimly lit room. His head ached fiercely and sitting up sent a sharp spike of pain to his temples. He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to block out the sensation enough to think properly. He heard a soft noise like someone drawing in breath sharply to his left and soon found himself enveloped in Rose's tight embrace.

"Doctor! You're okay, I was so worried!" she exclaimed.

He chuckled and returned her hug as best he could. "How long have I been out?" he inquired.

"An hour, maybe two?" she pulled back from the hug enough to examine him critically but didn't let go of his shoulders. The pain in his head had eased enough to allow him to open his eyes again so he could see the concern on her face. "At least, that's how long it's been since I woke up. The others," he jerked his head at this, "they said you'd be fine, that sometimes the transport effects people differently, but still..." she trailed off.

"What others? Where are we?" he asked, looking around the room to get his bearings. The space was bare of any decoration; a small lamp stood in a corner, barely illuminating the plain wooden chair Rose must've been sitting in beside the narrow mattress perched atop a simple metal bed frame. It looked a bit like somewhere on early twentieth century Earth but his time senses felt numb, like he'd been wrapped in cotton wool. Whether that was because of the trauma they'd been recently subjected to or if he was being blocked, he wasn't sure, but either way, it was hardly a good sign.

"The people who found us, brought you in here when I couldn't wake you. I'm not really clear on where we are exactly. Some sort of city, don't think it's the same planet we were on though. I expect you could ask them."

He nodded and swung his legs over the side of the bed. They'd left his trainers on, he noted. In fact, he was still wearing his coat as well, the long scarf had been pulled loose, tangling with the goggles that now hung around his neck. He rose unsteadily and ran a hand through his hair. Blue dust drifted down around him, shaken free with his movement.

"Blimey! Whatever brought us here wasn't your standard transmat; I haven't been this wobbly since I last regenerated!" he said with a half-hearted laugh.

Rose grabbed his arm just above the elbow to steady him and asked, "Are you sure you should be getting up then? 'Cos I could ask after some tea maybe."

"I'm fine, takes more than a dodgy transport beam to stop me. Besides," he told her with a quirk of his lips, "superior Time Lord biology, I'll be right as rain in a minute." Rose noticed that he didn't protest her staying at his side as they made their way out of the bedroom though.

They entered what seemed to be a poorly finished sitting room to find four people, humanoid at least by the looks of them, sharing a hushed conversation over drinks. Silence filled the room as they noted the Doctor's entrance. All four stared at him curiously.

"Hello!" he greeted them brightly, "I'm the Doctor."

There was a pause as the group seemed unsure of who should speak first. An older woman with steel grey curly hair pulled back in an unruly bun cleared her throat and set down her beverage.

"A doctor, eh? Richard's going to be delighted." She held out her hand to shake the Doctor's. "I'm Mae Bracewell, formerly first officer of the Starship Hawking."

Mae pointed to her companions in turn, beginning with the young man with strangely coloured eyes to her left, dressed in a cheerful striped jumper. "This is Gregory Nye," she smiled as he nodded in acknowledgment and moved on to a slim woman with jet black hair and bold red glasses, "Sayuri Hoshi," she indicated and introduced the last, a sturdy young man with short blonde hair dressed in a dark jacket as, "Pasha Kulikova."

"Welcome to Corazón Perdido, the city that time forgot," she concluded with a grim smile.

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow and asked, "'the city that time forgot' sounds a bit ominous, I suppose there's a story behind that?"

He noted the somber looks that clouded the faces of the members of their welcoming committee as he and Rose took the seats indicated by Mae Bracewell's outstretched hand. Pasha rose, avoiding their questioning gaze, and muttered something about fetching more refreshments before exiting the room. Mae sat down opposite them with her hands in her lap, looking apprehensive. Gregory and Sayuri fidgeted nervously on the threadbare sofa.

Mae cleared her throat and began, "this is always the hardest part. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is your new home. There is no way out of Corazón Perdido that we've found; the city seems to exist outside of the rest of time. There are currently 4,374 residents, including you two, brought here from various places and times throughout the galaxy without warning or explanation. The city itself seems to have been built piecemeal from fragments of different centuries and locations. The good news is, whoever or whatever pulled us in doesn't seem to want us dead; we have ample supplies and continuous food sources available."

She held up a hand to stop the inevitable barrage of questions evident on the Doctor and Rose's faces. " I realise this is a lot to take in. You'll be provided living quarters and your skills assessed for work detail assignments. We've done our best to create a functional community under the circumstances, as long as you respect your fellow beings and contribute via your work detail, you are free to live your lives in Corazón Perdido as you see fit. Gregory, Sayuri, Pasha and I are here to ease the transition as much as possible. I'm sorry."

Pasha returned with a tray bearing steaming drinks for them. Rose accepted hers gratefully and sipped at it while the Doctor looked pained and uncharacteristically dumbfounded at this new information. Part of his discomfort stemmed from the fact that his time senses had yet to return to normal. He worried that this meant Mae Bracewell was correct and they were indeed being held in some sort of temporal bubble. He couldn't feel the TARDIS either, which was never good news.

"How long have you been trapped here?" he asked.

"I and my crewmates arrived here about five years ago, Doctor. However, the earliest residents have been in Corazón Perdido for nearly twenty. You're our first new residents in over a year though," Mae replied.

Rose's stomach dropped when she heard this and she swallowed a gulp of her not-quite-tea hard. They'd faced the prospect of being stuck before and made it out every time. She just had to stay calm and help the Doctor find a way to fix this.

The Doctor began grilling their rescuers with questions about their arrivals into the city, points (and dates) of origin, transport experiences, observed temporal phenomenon, and the exact size of the city. Gregory took over answering the Doctor's more technical inquiries to the best of his abilities; evidently he was a member of the scientific work detail charged with, among other things, exploring possible avenues of escape. His answers were not particularly encouraging but the Doctor was at least pleased with how thorough the science team had been thus far.

Rose stifled a yawn; it was going to be a long night.


	3. New Friends

**Chapter 3**

While the Doctor continued his exhaustive survey of the futility of their current predicament, Rose attempted to get to know the two quieter members of the welcome party. They were both humans from Earth, as it turned out; Sayuri had been a writer in Tokyo in 2278 and Pasha a young soldier from St Petersburg in 2035. They shared that Gregory had been a graduate student at the University of Mars in the 41st century while Mae and her crew from the Starship Hawking joined them from the 34th. Curious, Rose asked when the "oldest" and "youngest" of the city's residents had come from.

"Well, that depends, I suppose. When did you and the Doctor come from Rose?" Sayuri asked.

Rose frowned; good question. "When I left home last, I think it was 2006, but I've no idea what year it was when we got pulled in here. The Doctor and I... well, we don't exactly do things in the right order or even stay in the same place for very long." She tugged anxiously at the sleeves of her jacket.

Pasha raised an eyebrow and gave a deep rumbling laugh, "in my time, you would be my mother's age, yet you look to be my little sister's!" Rose's aghast look only made him laugh harder.

Sayuri leaned forward and patted her knee encouragingly. "Don't let his teasing get to you. He could be my grandfather many times over, yet I am ten years older. It's best not to think about the time differentials, it only makes dating in Corazón harder," she offered with a wink.

Rose felt her cheeks colour and tried not to look at the Doctor as she answered, "oh, age differences don't really bother me much, just the first time anyone's compared me to his mother before!" She smiled and picked up her cup to take another drink. "What are your jobs here when you're not busy collecting stray time travelers from the streets?"

Pasha gave her a flirtatious grin and said, "I work on the construction detail; we scavenge supplies and make sure that whatever we need gets built. Sayuri is a teacher."

Surprised, Rose asked, "there are children here?"

"Of course there are! Put several hundred humanoids together for just a few years, let alone nearly twenty, and these things happen. We have residents who arrived as children with the Starliner Bon Venture that are raising their own families now." Sayuri brushed a lock of her dark hair back behind an ear and reached for her own drink.

Rose blushed slightly, embarrassed. She felt silly for not realising that. She fought off another yawn unsuccessfully. Maybe she'd be able to think more clearly after some sleep. She turned her head to watch the Doctor, still carrying on an animated discussion with Gregory and Mae. It sounded like he was explaining something involving gravity lensing and quantum particles. Rose was going to have to be the one to ask after a proper bed, he barely slept more than a few hours a week normally, and he'd already had that earlier while recovering from their surprise transport.

She set down her empty cup and looked at Sayuri and Pasha. "You said something about being assigned living quarters. I don't suppose those are nearby are they?"

Pasha nodded and caught Mae's attention, "we should take them to the residential district before it gets any later. You can take the Doctor to meet the other members of the science team in the morning. Some of us _do_ need to sleep before our shifts start at eight bells."

Mae noted the weary expressions on Rose and her colleagues' faces. She looked a bit chagrined at his admonishment and stood to lead them outside. The Doctor and Gregory, having found someone with whom they could share their boundless enthusiasm for science, were fast becoming best mates it seemed. The Doctor took Rose's hand in his own as they headed for the door but he continued his conversation with Gregory about the limited sensor readings the team had managed to gather without a beat.

As they exited the house, the Doctor got his first look at the city of Corazón Perdido. Night had fallen but there was still enough light for his eyes to make out most of their surroundings. The windows around them revealed dark and empty buildings. It was, as promised, a veritable mish-mash of architectural styles and eras; the patchwork construction far more obvious than the casual merging of ancient and new that you'd see so often in, for example, old European cities or the temple districts of Terrelon IV. Even the ground underneath them changed abruptly, leaving jagged lines of division where the street rose or fell in elevation and switched materials between pavers to smooth concrete, tarmac, dirt, or cobble. Some of the patches seemed to match the cracked blue-grey stone of the mysterious planet they'd landed on earlier that day.

The sky was filled with stars that, even the Doctor, lacking any frame of reference here, could not name with any degree of confidence. Curiously, a bright ribbon of blue and green rippled high overhead, as though skimming across the surface of an invisible dome enclosing them. Whatever was holding them captive here, it was generating a magnetic field strong enough to produce an impressive aurora.

Rose gasped when she looked up and saw it, squeezing the Doctor's hand tightly. He grinned at her, delighted in her awe and wonder. He was glad he'd still managed to take her somewhere beautiful, even if he had no idea how to get them out yet. There had to be some way. He'd promised her mother he'd take care of her. A small part of him worried that this was what that dark feeling of an approaching storm had been warning him of back on Earth in 2012. He pushed that thought away quickly and focused instead on the warm feeling of her hand against his own cool palm and the exciting prospect of exploring this puzzle of a city with her.

Their four guides, well aware of the arresting effect that the first sight of Corazón's evening lights have on new residents, had paused to wait for them to collect themselves before directing them down the uneven road towards the inhabited portions of the city. The Doctor and Rose followed them into the oddly glittering centre of the city that time forgot.


	4. Residential District

**Chapter 4**

The further they walked in to the city, the more signs of life they encountered. Clearly, the city was large enough to house a few million people but they'd elected to settle together in a small district comprised of multistory row houses and large blocks of flats that could have originated anywhere in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries on Earth. Electric lights hung in strings arranged haphazardly between lampposts that would have been more at home in the nineteenth century. They gave the streets a twinkling, fantastical appearance as they swayed in the gentle evening breeze.

Mae took them to a large warehouse that had been helpfully labeled "residential goods storage" and selected a rolling trolley before pushing it towards a far corner. All around them were stacks of furniture and appliances, just as varied as the city itself. The section in the corner was marked with a dusty sign Rose couldn't quite read through the grime. Mae lifted a large box from the pile there and deposited it on the trolley with a heavy clatter.

"This is the new resident starter kit, should have all the basics for cooking, cleaning, bedding, and personal hygiene plus a few maps and information about work detail assessments. You are human right?" she asked.

Rose nodded and the Doctor didn't bother to correct her assumption that this answer included the both of them. Mae nodded and pushed the trolley back towards the entrance. Sayuri and Gregory had wandered off in the aisles while they'd been fetching the new resident box and now rejoined them with bundles of clothing in hand. Pasha had also slipped away but had yet to return.

Sayuri held the clothes up to show Rose and said, "these will get you started, if anything doesn't fit you can trade it in later."

Rose gave her a weak smile and bit her lip uncertainly. The Doctor was staring at the pile of clothing clearly intended for him that Gregory had set on the trolley with an uneasy expression on his face. If she wasn't quite so worried about their situation as she was, Rose might have laughed at the thought of the Doctor having to change out of his beloved brown suit. This incarnation was notably less reluctant than his leather-clad predecessor to part with his unofficial uniform, but still, with the whinging he did when he had to wear anything else, you'd think he slept in the bloody thing.

They brought the laden trolley with them back out on to the streets and carefully maneuvered it over the rough terrain more or less uphill towards one of the newer looking buildings. Pasha reappeared holding two small silver keys on a string. He led them to a stairwell and announced that their new home would be number 842 and handed each of them a key. Pasha and Mae took the new resident box up the stairs together, leaving the rest of them to carry the clothing and a lamp that someone must've added to the trolley to the flat.

Inside, the air smelled somewhat stale, probably from being shut up and unused for years, but it was mostly clean, if a bit dusty in the corners. Pasha had obviously gone ahead of them to wipe down the worst of the dust and check that it was in livable condition. A broom and wiping cloth sat in the small mid-twentieth century kitchen. A quick tour revealed that the flat had two bedrooms and a small bathroom down a short hallway.

Spotting her inquiring glance at the loo, Pasha informed her, "the plumbing works, just be patient with the hot water, sometimes it takes a while to warm up. My crew retrofit this building just a few years ago; you've got neighbors but fewer than you would in one of the others on this block. Be sure to introduce yourselves in the morning. They're all newer residents as well, so they should be able to help you make the adjustment better than some of the older residents."

Mae looked around the flat as though mentally running through a checklist and, seemingly satisfied, nodded to herself before turning to say to Rose and the Doctor, "we'll leave you to get settled in. At least one of us will be by in the morning to check in and take you to collect more furnishings and supplies. For now, you've got a bed in the other room and there should be some nutrient bars in the kit if you're hungry."

The four of them shuffled out of the room, leaving Rose and the Doctor standing in the middle of a largely empty flat in dusty clothes and not the faintest clue as to what to do next. It was likely the exhaustion talking, but Rose suddenly found herself fighting an overwhelming urge to cry. Noticing the tears threatening in her eyes, the Doctor pulled her into a firm hug, smoothing her hair with his hand and murmuring comforting assurances that he'd find a way out of this somehow.

Composing herself, Rose pulled back from the hug and wiped her damp eyes, smudging her mascara slightly. "At least this place isn't orbiting a black hole or keeping an ancient evil monster locked up in the basement, eh?" she quipped.

The Doctor smiled. "That we know of," he suggested with a raised eyebrow.

Rose hit him lightly on the arm, "don't go saying things like that! Next thing you know we'll be running for our lives again, and we've only just got here."

She went over to the box and rummaged through it until she pulled out a couple of blankets and sheets with two small packets marked "pillow: open carefully" and handed them to the Doctor before heading to the pile of women's clothing to find something to sleep in. "You can get the bed in order while I test out the shower." She yawned and headed down the hall clutching a towel, large t-shirt, and a fresh pair of knickers.

When she emerged from the bath, Rose found the Doctor resting atop the newly made bed reading through the new resident packet that had been provided to them. He'd shed his overcoat and jacket and kicked his trainers off. She noticed there was still some blue dust in his hair; it gave him a strange, almost frosted, look.

"I left you some hot water, if you need it," she offered.

He nodded and rose from the bed, tugging at his tie. "I guess I'll have to. I can't find my sonic; I must've dropped it before we were transported. That's going to make our escape less convenient. Still, I've made do with far less before. Used to manage with nothing more than my wits and a bit of celery, after all!" He gave her a falsely bright smile that she didn't quite believe but decided not to argue. She was far too tired for that at the moment.

Rose was asleep when the Doctor returned to the bedroom. He rubbed at his wet hair with a towel and tugged uncomfortably at the unfamiliar dark tee and pants he'd retrieved from his pile. Gregory had made a reasonably good guess at his size, they were only slightly too large.

There was really very little for him to do in the flat until the morning and his head still ached from earlier. The muffled feeling that his time senses had been bludgeoned with the metaphorical equivalent of a brick had not faded either. He was beginning to suspect that it would be a permanent feature until he found a way to get them out of here.

He sighed and climbed in to the bed behind Rose. Her sleepy hand caught his and pulled his arm around to hug against her chest. He allowed himself a light kiss on the back of her head before drifting off as well.


	5. Bells

**Chapter 5**

Morning seemed to arrive sooner than expected. The Doctor woke first to find that he'd wrapped himself more thoroughly around Rose in the night; embarrassed, he set about shifting his traitorous limbs as carefully as he could to avoid disturbing her slumber. He really ought to stop doing this. It was only going to make it harder for him when he lost her, to time, to tragedy, to his own stubborn pride. He'd become quite the sentimental old fool; clinging to this young human girl, letting her creep in to his hearts like this. He just couldn't seem to help it with her though.

When Rose stirred, he was still in the bed, lost in his thoughts, gazing vacantly out toward the uncovered window that featured a fairly good view of the remarkable city they'd found themselves trapped in. At first she snuggled closer to him until a portion of her half-asleep brain finally registered who she was laying against and she started upright quickly, taking the blanket with her.

"Oh... hello," she said, awkwardly trying to cover up her startled reaction. She hadn't really expected to find him still there in the morning. Even though he'd taken to staying with her at night to help her fall asleep ever since the incident with the Wire, he would always be gone come morning.

"Hello," he managed to reply, suddenly finding it difficult to recall why he'd been lecturing himself earlier. She looked lovely in the morning light with her sleep-mussed blonde hair and clean face bare of the heavy eye makeup she usually wore.

Something hovered in the air between them, that unspoken of tension that they both tried to ignore. Every once in a while they'd stumble in on it unawares and the universe around them seemed to pause with bated breath to see if this would be the occasion that one of them acted upon it. This would not be that day; instead, they were interrupted by the sound of bells ringing, no doubt signaling the hour to the residents of Corazón Perdido. The moment between them burst like a popped soap bubble and the Doctor gave her a boyish grin and announced that they ought to be getting up and about, they had a mystery to solve after all.

Breakfast of nutrient bars and tap water was underwhelming but adequate. Rose refrained from commenting when the Doctor emerged from the bedroom in his dusty suit, worn over a dark blue t-shirt supplied by their warehouse trip last night. His irrepressibly untidy hair was uncharacteristically free of product and fell forward on his face. He caught her eyes on him as he entered and ran a hand through his hair anxiously. Rose chewed her lip and turned her head to keep from laughing at him. Instead, she handed him a nutrient bar that smelled vaguely banana flavoured and went to fetch her trainers from the bedroom.

They were discussing the plan for finding a way back to the TARDIS when a rap on the door interrupted their conversation. Mae and Pasha had returned as promised to continue their orientation. The day began with a tour of the inhabited portions of the city. In an effort to reduce travel time and use their resources more efficiently, most of the primary facilities for community life had been grouped together. Nearly everything they would need could be found within a few minutes walk of their new flat.

They passed the school building and library on their left to enter a large public square that had clearly been remodeled by the residents. One end of the space was filled with round picnic tables scattered evenly over the patchwork ground that had been leveled out, while the other end featured a gently sloped grassy amphitheater facing a small stage and unbroken blank wall. Mae informed them that this was where most public meetings were held in the city as well as an excellent place to find music and theatrical performances in the evenings.

As they walked, their presence garnered a significant amount of attention from the other residents. According to Mae, it had just passed seven bells so many people were leaving their homes to head to their duty shifts. By the time they reached the science building, a sturdy, concrete edifice built to withstand nuclear bombardment, not architectural critique, they had been introduced more times than Rose could count. Mae and Pasha seemed to know everyone they encountered, greeting them by name and offering a brief anecdote for each. Rose was reminded of living in the Powell Estates where thin walls and ever watchful eyes meant very little managed to escape the notice of your neighbors.

At the science building, their party split, Mae taking the Doctor inside to meet the rest of the team, while Pasha led Rose across the street into a somewhat crookedly situated domed structure that resembled a Roman construction augmented with neon lighting. This was the Corazón Perdido city hall. Inside, he took her down a hallway that opened on a small room filled with filing cabinets and several writing desks. He gestured for her to sit and searched through one of the cabinets to locate a handful of papers.

"Right then," he said, "let's get started on your skills assessment." He joined her at the table with a charming smile.

He had her take a short written exam and asked her a number of questions about her education, date of origin, age, work history, cultural prohibitions against performing any particular activities, normal level of physical activity, and marital status. It took her a moment to catch that this last question had been flirtatious after the barrage preceding it. He grinned wider when she admitted that she was technically single. He had bright blue eyes like her first Doctor and the sort of easygoing attitude that had made Captain Jack so much fun to be around. The low voice and Russian accent didn't hurt either. A year ago she might've been _very_ interested.

Now though, the only person she could think about that way, despite her best efforts not to, was a certain skinny alien bloke with really great hair and a nonstop gob. Sadly, it wasn't like the Doctor was ever going to be anything other than her best mate. He 'd made that more than clear after she'd questioned him about Sarah Jane. He cared about her, certainly, but she was deluding herself if she thought that meant he returned her feelings.

Rose smiled at Pasha and asked if he had any more questions on his list. He blinked at her abrupt return to a businesslike tone but took it well. Shuffling his notes, he shook his head.

"Based on your answers, I think you'd fit best in with our food processing detail. It's not the most glamorous job, but an army marches on its stomach, as they say."

Rose frowned; not a dinner lady again! She was beginning to suspect the universe was taunting her with food service positions.

Seeing her look, Pasha hurried to add, "it's really not all that bad, besides, that work detail only lasts six bells, you'll have plenty of free time."

Rose pointed out that she had no idea how long a 'bell' was, prompting him to explain the city's timekeeping. A bell was more or less an hour; thirty bells to a day, six days to a week, five weeks to a month, ten months to a year. Her shift would begin at eight bells and end at fourteen bells. Either because the planet lacked any appreciable axial tilt, or due to the unusual nature of the forces that kept them all trapped inside, there were no seasons to speak of. The sun rose and set at the same time every day, half past the fifth bell, and just after the twenty-first bell. To make things even more confusing, there were different bell sounds to signal whether it was an afternoon, or evening bell. He assured her that it would begin to make sense as she adjusted to the new routine.

Pasha guided her out of the city hall and down a different road than the one they'd come up earlier. They came upon an enormous yellow and grey warehouse with flat shopping trolleys queued up neatly beside the door. They continued on around the side of the building rather than enter in the front. Up a set of metal stairs and through a heavy door, they emerged on a catwalk encircling the edges of Corazón Perdido's food processing plant. Hundreds of people worked below them, cleaning, sorting, chopping produce, running giant mixers, and checking on various other cooking systems around them. Rose spotted fresh nutrient bars rolling out on conveyor belts from what she thought must be the ovens toward workers who were putting them in boxes.

Pasha departed after flagging down a harried lizard woman he introduced as Tatiana and passing Rose into her care. Tatiana gave her a disdainful appraisal and muttered something about how they were always giving her the useless ones before barking an order for Rose to follow and marching off to the back of the warehouse. Whatever the Doctor was doing with the science team, she hoped he was getting on better than she was.


	6. Barriers and Books

**Chapter 6**

The Science building was a squat, functional structure comprised mainly of concrete and steel. Its most prominent feature was the enormous antenna array perched on its roof. Mae led the Doctor inside and up the stairs to a central hallway. Along the way they passed several doors with warning notices posted on them advising the use of eye or ear protection due to volatile experiments in progress. Mae did her best to give the Doctor an idea of what lay in the rooms beyond without stopping for a full tour. He followed dutifully and made note of everything in case it became relevant later.

They arrived at a door marked solely with a crude drawing of a stick figure holding a beaker and the words "enter at your own risk" scrawled below it. Inside, they found what might've been a moderately sized room, save that it had been nearly stuffed full of computer equipment obviously salvaged from throughout the city. On first glance, the Doctor spotted bits and pieces spanning at least four centuries of technology bodged together. Disappointingly, that meant that most of it was woefully primitive by his standards. Still, it was better than nothing and certainly not the first time he had found himself in a situation with suboptimal resources. Hell, that was practically his _modus operandi_.

He'd evidently been expected. Four sets of eyes looked up to greet them as they entered. The Doctor recognized one of them; Gregory sat at a table in the middle of the room with the others wearing another multihued jumper. Mae made introductions again. Whetu Simona was a female Haptotian physicist from the 52nd century; a humanoid race native to the fourth moon of Hapto Prime, whose delicate translucent skin revealed the magnificent complexity of their faintly phosphorescent nervous system. Oskar Gudmunsson was a slim man in his mid to late thirties with feathery blue hair and serious eyes; he'd been an electrical engineer in the 29th century. The final member, and indeed, leader of the team was a large man with white hair, a full beard, and golden eyes who greeted him with a weary smile and firm handshake, saying, "Richard Strahm. Gregory tells me you're a man of science."

"Most days," was the Doctor's understated reply. Lately, at Rose's insistence, he'd been trying to resist the urge to show off as much. Evidently it was rude to declare himself the most capable scientific mind in the room, even if it was the truth.

The Doctor joined his new team at the table and listened as they continued the job Gregory had started the previous night in catching him up on their current situation and the status of the escape efforts in addition to the many other projects that the team had underway. Creating and maintaining a civilization out of the jumbled confusion that was Corazón Perdido had been a Herculean task, one that relied heavily on the expertise of the few residents who in their previous lives had been trained in scientific and engineering disciplines.

The more the Doctor was told about the situation, the more concerned he became that he and Rose could very well be stuck here for quite some time. The members of the science team were clearly intelligent beings and hadn't managed to find an answer despite years of work.

The city was encased in some sort of barrier that prevented anyone or anything from leaving. It extended well below the ground and up to the edges of the planet's atmosphere. Attempts had been made in the early years to dig under it, to no avail. The last person to simply _touch_ the barrier had ended up in a coma for two days. The barrier was not completely impenetrable though, visible light and ultraviolet radiation passed through it, otherwise they wouldn't be able to see the stars or operate the solar generators that powered most of the city. Radio and subspace transmissions (at least those that the team had been able to produce with their limited technology) simply reflected off of the barrier and they hadn't been able to detect anything but the equivalent of white noise incoming on any frequency.

There were two primary projects that the team were focusing on as routes to escape. The first, and possibly most futile was the ongoing search for the power source for the barrier itself. Unfortunately, all of their data seemed to indicate it must be either heavily shielded or outside of the barrier where they'd never be able to reach it. The second project involved constructing a transmitter powerful or clever enough to get a distress signal out in the hope that someone on the outside might be able to release them. A flaw in this plan was, of course, that it risked pulling any potential rescuer inside of the trap with them. And that was assuming that anyone receiving their signal could even _find_ the city. None of the residents, including the Doctor, who'd been pulled into the city like he had, while investigating the mysterious blue planet orbiting a star well outside the galactic mainline that was giving off a strange energy signature, had seen any sign of a city on the planet before they were transported.

The team strongly suspected that whatever was keeping them inside the barrier involved some degree of asynchronous temporal displacement. The city itself, with its eclectic mixture of eras and architecture, and its residents, pulled from various points in time, leant strong support for this hypothesis. The Doctor agreed, but with his time senses still crippled by whatever forces were at work here, he could hardly offer any additional data. There were only a few possible races who could have the technology to displace a whole city in time and with the Time Lords gone, the list was not a friendly one. A dark thought crossed his mind that this was just the sort of thing that the Black Guardian or Trickster might do. What purpose sealing off a city from the rest of time and populating it from various points in history served was beyond him.

* * *

At the end of her shift, Rose headed back towards their new flat with a sack of fresh groceries slung over her shoulder. One of the few perks of working the food prep detail was that they got first choice of foodstuffs to take home. The city operated a loose rationing system; residents were given a set allotment per person in their household and efforts were made to prevent food going to waste.

There were no animals or livestock in the city she'd learned. Everything the residents ate was grown in fields that spanned much of the western edges of the enclosed land. Many of the fruits, grains, and vegetables were ones that Rose recognized (she'd selected a bunch of bananas to take to the Doctor, for example) but others were entirely foreign. She did discover that yeast had been obtained somehow, she hadn't had time to ask, as they had fresh baked bread and a portion of the food production warehouse was dedicated to brewing beer.

She'd been assigned to a station washing and chopping vegetables to start; it hadn't been as bad as she feared. Rose did her best to make friends with her new coworkers and spent most of the day chatting with a friendly bloke named Amrit who'd been a pilot before he ended up in the city. One minute he'd been dodging hostile fire, the next, he'd woken up in Corazón Perdido's medical ward with several injuries consistent with a crash. He seemed fairly content with his predicament and switch in career to kitchen help; he had met his wife here and had two small children with another on the way. Rose couldn't help but smile as he babbled cheerfully about his growing family.

Amrit had offered her a number of suggestions for fun things to do in the city and advised which storage warehouse would be best to visit in order to find good furnishings for her flat. She didn't particularly relish the thought that they'd be staying long enough to set up house, but she made a mental note of the information anyway. In the very least they ought to get a few chairs and a table so that she and the Doctor didn't have to stand hovering over the kitchen counters to eat. A sofa wouldn't be amiss either.

As she walked, Rose noticed that most of the residents wore fairly uniform clothing in only a few different colors with occasional bits and pieces that clearly had arrived with them from their previous lives. All of the clothing she'd been given had matched this profile as well; sturdy trousers with ample exterior pockets, plain t-shirts, long sleeved jumpers, and light jackets, all made of something that felt like cotton in either off-white, dark blue, pale green, or a reddish brown. It seemed a little military at first but she noticed several people had modified their standard-issue clothes to suit their personal preferences and she felt better. One woman had on a pale green dress that Rose resolved to find out where she'd gotten if they were here very long.

The Doctor had promised to meet her back at the flat when his shift ended, but knowing him, it could be a while. To give herself something to do until he got back, Rose ducked in to the library.

She'd started reading so much more since she'd met the Doctor. He liked to wind down after the day's adventure in the TARDIS library; sometimes they watched a film or a bit of human or alien telly together (_Werchorct Em Lunar_ was a personal favorite of hers, it was a bit like _Coronation Street_ with space slugs). Sometimes they curled up next to one another on the sofa and read. On particularly good nights, he'd read his book to her, adding in random anecdotes and asides about the author or back story behind the work as he went. Since he didn't really sleep as much as she did, he usually ended up carrying her back to her room and tucking her in. The best nights were when he stayed with her to make sure she fell asleep.

The library was constructed more or less as an oval, with mismatched bookshelves ringing the walls on four floors, all open to a central reading room on the ground floor. Rose could see maybe five other residents scattered throughout, quietly pouring over the shelves. Not sure where to start, she wandered aimlessly, pausing to peer at titles on various shelves. Curiously all of the books seemed to be written in English. Did the TARDIS' translation powers still work this far away? She filed the thought away as a question to ask the Doctor later.

She was too preoccupied to notice that someone had come up behind her and started when a voice asked, "can I help you find anything?"

The voice belonged to a woman in her sixties or seventies, comfortably attired in slip-on shoes, a soft blue tunic, and pale trousers. She had long white hair in a messy side plait and a mischievous twinkle in her brown eyes. "You must be Rose," she said with a warm smile, "I'm Chantrea, the head librarian."

"Hello," Rose began, before curiosity overcame her, "how'd you know my name?"

Chantrea gave her an enigmatic look. "My dear, knowledge is the most powerful thing in the universe," she gestured to the shelves around her, "I think you'll find that there is very little in Corazón Perdido that I don't know."

Rose was nonplussed by this answer but decided to let it pass. No doubt her arrival with the Doctor after a year of quiet had been the talk of the town. She shouldn't be surprised if everyone knew who she was by now.

"Were you looking for something in particular?" Chantrea asked.

Rose shook her head. "No, not really. Though, perhaps something with a bit of romance would be nice."

The Doctor always complained when she picked up those books whenever they happened to stop in at a chemist's for supplies. Her first Doctor would roll his eyes and mutter something vaguely disparaging about 'humans' but she'd seen him sneaking a peek at them when he thought she wasn't in the room. She just read them because they were light and harmless fun, but she had to admit she enjoyed when she could get a rise out of the Doctor. On one particularly memorable occasion, she'd read a rather racy passage aloud to see if he'd blush; when he got over his obvious discomfort, the Doctor had straightened his tie and announced that the author's descriptions of the period costumes were terribly anachronistic and what's more, he could prove it. That was how they'd ended up at a ball in 17th century Spain.

Chantrea gave her a knowing smile and nodded. "Come this way, I think I can find you something that will fit the bill."

When Rose finally made it back to the flat, she had a stack of five new books to read and a new friend.


	7. Willpower

**Chapter 7**

Just as the Doctor feared, there had not been an easy solution to their problem. As days turned to weeks trapped inside the city, he grew restless and anxious over his failure to effectuate a miraculous escape. Stuck without his TARDIS and with his time senses blocked, he felt terribly helpless. His early confidence eroded as the reality of their situation sunk in; he wasn't used to being on the slow path, watching time pass in the right order. Was this what it was like to be human?

He could tell their confinement was taking its toll on his companion as well. Rose was wonderful of course, and brilliantly resilient, but even with him there she'd been waking in the night regularly, frightened and shaking. When he asked her what was wrong, she'd replied that she dreamt that she could hear the TARDIS calling out to her in pain. He did his best to calm her and soothe her back to sleep but her dreams worried him. What if whoever or whatever was keeping them here had done something to his TARDIS?

He'd taken over the spare bedroom in the flat with his current project. He was attempting to build a device that could pick up on minute traces of energy left behind by the transport process, in the hopes of identifying the particular technology behind it. If he could locate the source of the transport energy, then maybe they could reverse it. Since he suspected time manipulation was involved in the process, he was designing it to pick up on artron energy as well. Rose had dubbed the device his "timey whimey detector" in jest when he'd explained what he was trying to do with it. The process was slow-going without his sonic and several of the parts he needed had to be manufactured wholesale by hand.

He wasn't even certain that the device would be of much use once completed though; energy patterns tended to degrade rapidly and he and Rose had been the only recent victims. And their trail was already nearly five weeks cold.

The Doctor swore in Gallifreyan as his sleeve caught on a jagged metal edge, pulling a still hot soldering iron on to his lap. Hopping and patting at his trousers, he barely managed to not injure himself further when he tripped over his chair. Very glad Rose was not home to witness the spectacle he'd made of himself, he grimaced as he surveyed the damage. His pinstriped trousers, already beginning to look at bit worse for wear without his ship's handy nanofabricators, now featured an ugly scorch mark and hole in the crotch. He was going to have to give in and change out of his favorite suit. Sighing, he tugged them off and held them up for closer inspection. Perhaps he could find a way to repair them.

The Doctor was walking dejectedly to the bedroom in just his pants when Rose returned to the flat. She'd been spending time in the evenings hanging out with her new friends, usually Sayuri and her fellow teacher Annabelle, though often Pasha would join them with his latest girlfriend. The Doctor had been too absorbed in his latest project to join them most of the time and Rose didn't want to disrupt him if it meant they found a way back to the TARDIS. Tonight though, she'd left early, she was feeling homesick and hearing them talk cheerfully about their lives in Corazón Perdido as if nothing was wrong was just too much for her.

Rose's sudden appearance startled the Doctor into dropping the damaged suit he'd had clutched in his hands, leaving him standing awkwardly in their hall in his shirtsleeves and pants.

"Doctor," she began carefully, "what are you doing?" He seemed slightly at a loss for words for a moment so she pressed further, playfully, "am I interrupting something?"

He looked at her blankly and then cleared his throat and looked down when he caught her meaning. "Ah, no. Just seem to have torn a hole in my suit." He stooped to gather the garment from the floor and hurried quickly into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Shaking her head, Rose moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on to make herself a cup of what passed for tea here. The Doctor reemerged from the bedroom wearing the dark blue multipocketed trousers that he'd been issued weeks ago but left untouched and an off-white jumper with the sleeves pushed up. Without his suit he seemed more vulnerable and seeing him in those clothes reminded her of how he'd looked just after regenerating last Christmas. Recalling that day just made her think of her mum and Mickey and how she didn't know if she'd ever see either of them again. It didn't seem very likely; not with Mickey fighting the remaining Cybermen on Parallel Earth and them stuck here.

Rose sat down hard at the table and dropped her head in her hands, struggling to reign in her emotions. It wouldn't do them any good to cry about it and she was tired of feeling helpless and overwhelmed. Not for the first time she wondered what impact having a way out would have on their fellow residents, many of whom had settled down in Corazón Perdido and made lives for themselves. Obviously some of them were still interested in leaving, otherwise, why have a science team working on it? But she knew the Doctor and his solutions were often fairly messy ones. Look at what had happened when they'd removed the Jagrafess from Satellite Five; the Daleks had come in and nearly destroyed the human race.

She felt a hand on her back and looked up to see the Doctor holding a cup of not-quite-tea to her. He was being sweet to her which for some reason made something inside her snap and she felt herself getting unreasonably angry with him. Or maybe it was angry at herself; she didn't know. Accepting the cup, she said somewhat more sharply than necessary, "I told you that if you kept wearing that thing every day, you'd ruin it."

He stepped back as though she'd slapped him with a confused expression on his face. She cringed internally at his response but heard herself continue anyway, "we might as well dress like the locals, since we don't appear to be going anywhere any time soon."

"Rose, I'm working on it. I promised you, I'll get us out of here." He meant it.

She looked up to meet his eyes, "Doctor, that was _weeks_ ago. In a month, they're going to be celebrating _twenty years_ since the first residents were brought here. What happens to me if it takes you another twenty to find us a way out?" She stood, ready to storm off or scream and yell at him more, she wasn't sure which.

He rocked back on his heels and stared at her solemnly. "I don't know," was his quiet reply.

Bitterly she muttered under her breath, "at least I don't have to worry about you dumping me in Aberdeen if we're trapped here," and tried to push past him.

He caught her by the arm and pulled her back though. "Rose! You don't mean that!"

She shook her head, unable to stop the tears now. "No, no... I'm just so scared Doctor! Everyone here has just given up! They're moving on with their lives like it doesn't even matter that they'll never get back home. And I can't pretend that it's okay! It's supposed to be me and you, exploring all of time and space!"

"Rose, look at me." His voice was pleading. "I'm doing everything I can to get us out of here. I'm so very sorry we're stuck here; I never wanted this to happen to you. I want you to be happy. Rose, you must know I lo... care about you more than anyone else in the universe."

And there it was. He'd nearly said it out loud. From the look on her face, she'd heard the word he hadn't been able to get past his lips. His gaze dropped to her mouth and he couldn't help but think how easy it would be for him to lean forward.

Rose stared at the Doctor in disbelief, all of her anger dissipated in an instant. He moved closer and all she could think was _is_ _he going to kiss me?!_ He came perilously close to following through, only to swallow hard and pull himself back at the last second. He muttered something about needing to fetch a part for his detector and fled the flat before she could process what had happened.

Outside the door, the Doctor paused to collect himself, his twin hearts beating furiously against his ribcage. He'd come entirely too close that time. Maybe it was this place, the quasi-normalcy and routine of it, making him think it was safe to feel this way. He was a fool. He had rules against this for a reason. Clenching his fists, he set off into the night before he lost all willpower and marched back in to that flat to finish what he'd nearly started.


	8. Old Wounds

**Chapter 8**

Unsure of what to do with himself, the Doctor found his legs taking him to the science building where he'd been spending so much of his time these days. It was still early enough that people wandered the city streets, laughing and talking, going on about their lives. Rose was right; these people had made Corazón Perdido their home.

He sighed as he came to a halt just outside the building, looking up at the modified transmitter on the roof, glittering in the night, softly illuminated by the city's ever present aurora. He frowned as the shifting green and blue tinged light revealed the silhouette of a lone figure perched on the roof. Who could that be at this hour?

Curious, he slipped inside and took the staircase leading to the top of the building. When he emerged on the roof, he approached cautiously, not wishing to startle the man seated with his legs dangling over the edge. A fall from this height would have rather unpleasant consequences. Once he was certain that the man was unlikely to plummet should he announce himself, he called out, "hello there!"

The man turned and revealed himself to be an inebriated Richard Strahm. "Doctor? Is that you?" he inquired, squinting in the semi-darkness. He motioned for the Doctor to join him, producing a glass bottle from a pack that had lain hidden at his side. "I scarcely recognized you without that suit on, my boy. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company this evening?"

The Doctor accepted the drink politely and took a seat next to Richard, crossing his legs beneath him. "Needed a walk to do some thinking and I saw you up here," was his reply.

"Good spot for thinking, this," Richard said, waving his own bottle vaguely at the view of the city and night sky. "I come here when I want to remember."

The two men sat in companionable silence for a while, watching as the flow of residents below them slowed to a trickle. The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment and found he could still feel the turn of the planet beneath them if he focused hard enough. It was comforting to know that not all of his senses had been numbed by this place.

"Where's home?" he finally asked, taking a tentative sip of his drink. It wasn't half bad as far as those sorts of things went. Some of his regenerations handled alcohol better than others; this was nowhere near as strong as the wine and banana daiquiris he'd inadvertently overindulged in several months ago in France. He'd had to metabolize the lot of it in a hurry when he'd returned to the ship to find Rose and Mickey in the clutches of those clockwork marvels. He suspected Richard had been sitting up here drinking for quite some time before he arrived.

"Home?" Richard snorted, "my home is long gone. I was born on Ellohem; its name likely means nothing to you. It was destroyed in the Last Great Time War, not that anyone really remembers that either."

The Doctor stiffened at the name but held his tongue. Richard was far too intoxicated at this point to notice; he carried on, describing the wonders of his planet and how he'd been off-world, studying at university, when the tragic news came. The Doctor barely listened; he'd been to Ellohem. It was one in a long line of worlds they'd had to abandon to the Daleks in the long dreadful advance towards the utter devastation at the Fall of Arcadia. Countless innocent worlds were lost in the war and the Doctor couldn't even recall the details of their final fates, having seen so many different timelines reversed and reinstated as the time battles raged. Guilt swirled sickeningly in his gut.

Richard finally realised that the Doctor hadn't said anything for a few minutes. He looked at him and asked, "where's your home then?"

"Lost as well. My ship has been my home for nearly as long as I can remember now," the Doctor said, pressing his lips together in a grim line, "I'm the last of my... family. They're all gone."

Richard nodded, understanding. "Shame we mere mortals don't get to change the past isn't it?" Then, perhaps sensing that they'd dwelled far too long on painful memories, he tried to lighten the mood. "Listen to me, going on about old wounds. We've got enough to worry about trying to work our way out of this damn gilded cage." He stood, wobbling only slightly and waving off the Doctor's move to help steady him. "It's getting late. What you're doing out here, letting an old man talk your ear off is beyond me. I certainly wouldn't hang around this long if I had a pretty lass waiting for me back at my flat like you have." He gave the Doctor a teasing wink and nearly toppled over.

"Whoa! Easy there." The Doctor took his arm despite his protests and guided him off the roof and back down the stairwell, trying not to think about Rose waiting for him back at the flat.

He left Richard sprawled out and snoring loudly on a cot in his office in the science building. He'd obviously spent more than a few nights there before. It was just as well, as the Doctor had no idea where Richard actually lived and superior Time Lord biology or no, he wasn't likely to get very far trying to move a man twice his weight.

When he got back to the flat, Rose was already asleep, curled up around his pillow on the bed. Coward that he was, he breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to face their earlier conversation again tonight. Closing the bedroom door gently, he crept back to his work in the spare room. The best thing he could do now would be to try and get them both out of here as fast as possible.


	9. Patterns

**Chapter 9 **

The next few weeks were frustrating for Rose. The Doctor seemed determined to pretend that nothing had happened at all; any attempt on her part to begin a conversation about it was met with either a rapid change of subject to some obscure historical or scientific fact or him suddenly recalling an urgent need to be elsewhere. Eventually she stopped bothering. It hurt, but he'd made his position clear; whatever she thought there might be between them, even if he felt it too, he wasn't going to act on it.

Instead of sitting around, awkwardly waiting to see if the Doctor changed his mind, Rose began her own efforts to find a way for them to leave Corazón Perdido. She'd noticed a pattern when talking with a few of the other residents about their lives before they were pulled into the city and she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that this was terribly important somehow. So she started doing what she did best, asking questions.

Being new to the city made her the perfect person to start conversations about how they arrived in Corazón. She got a notebook from Sayuri and began interviewing everyone she could, recording their answers so that she didn't miss anything. Most people were eager to talk with her; at Chantrea's suggestion she told any that asked that she was interested in writing a book, inspired by the rapidly approaching twentieth year celebrations. Her librarian friend had been a great help in organizing her search and sorting through her messy notes. Soon she had hundreds of stories to compare and was more certain than ever that she'd spotted something crucial.

It seemed there were only two ways to end up inside the city; either by accident while investigating strange energy signatures on the mysterious blue planet that shouldn't exist (like herself and the Doctor, the crew of the Starship Hawking, and Gregory Nye had), or plucked from time deliberately by some unknown being(s).

It had to have been deliberate because whoever it was that brought them here had been selective in their choices. All of the residents were oxygen breathing humanoids with similar dietary needs (something the Doctor had noticed early on) and largely compatible DNA. But here was the curious bit, _every single person_ Rose had talked to had been transported just as they found themselves in situations where they were hopelessly lost or about to die. They were all orphans of time, people whom history would not miss if they disappeared.

The best example of this was the starliner Bon Venture; one of the very first, and by far the largest, groups transported to the city. The Bon Venture had suffered a malfunction in its FTL drives en route to a pleasure planet that left them stranded, thousands of light years away from the nearest occupied system and without functional long range communications systems due to interference from a nearby pulsar. Panic had just set in when all nearly twelve hundred passengers and crew found themselves standing in an abandoned city built from fragments of the distant past.

For the better part of fifteen years, the population of the city grew steadily, with new residents arriving weekly, each having been spared a similarly tragic fate, and then, abruptly, it stopped. In the last five years, only twenty seven new residents arrived in the city, all of them unlucky enough to get too close to the dark pillars left standing on the dusty blue world. All of them, unlike their kidnapped predecessors, arriving in relative chronological order, though the amount of time that passed outside the city seemed to be much greater than that inside. Gregory had arrived just two years after the crew of the Hawking despite having landed on the planet six hundred and fifty odd years later than they had. With each person she surveyed, the clearer the picture became.

Rose had a theory; the initial residents were brought here for some purpose, perhaps an elaborate experiment, but something had happened five years ago (or however many years that translated to outside the bubble) to stop whoever had been transporting people into the city and the place had been left running on autopilot ever since. She just wasn't sure whether that was good news or bad news for their likelihood of escape. It was probably time for her to quit hiding in the library and bring this to the Doctor's attention.

* * *

The Doctor had put his time alone to good use; he'd finally finished building the detector and was ready to test it in the field. He'd emerged from his workroom with cheerful aplomb only to find himself speaking to an empty flat. Come to think of it, she hadn't been in when he came home from the science building earlier either. He'd done such a good job of avoiding talking to her about his feelings that she'd simply left him to his work. They'd barely seen each other for nearly a week. He'd managed to bollocks up yet another relationship, hadn't he?

Sometimes he wished that humans and Gallifreyans didn't look so much alike. It would be so much harder to forget that they're separate species, both for himself and his companions, if the differences were more obvious. It had been easier for him to remember before the war, but with his own people gone he'd found himself drawn to humanity by more than just a fond fascination. Rose had played a large part in that, but it had been building up to this for a long time. He'd fallen for the Earth and its people and all but adopted it as his home; preferring humanity's boundless enthusiasm and ingenuity to the rigid confines of Time Lord society. When the guilt and sorrow from the war became too much, it was often all too easy for him to imagine being one of them, living an ordinary life.

What made that thought worse was the knowledge that it was not impossible; he had the technology in his TARDIS to alter his biology and make himself a human man. A man who could truly be with Rose and not have to worry about the entire universe. As tempting as that was, he couldn't do it. He may be the man who never stopped running from his problems, but he never could stand by and watch when he could be helping either. As the sole surviving Time Lord, the burden of protecting it all fell to him. It was a responsibility he took seriously, even if his approach to fulfilling it amounted to bumbling about time and space, looking for fun and adventure until trouble presented itself.

Feeling morose, the Doctor retrieved his overcoat from the back of a chair he'd tossed it on and left the flat with his device in hand. He could use some company for the testing phase and he needed a guide to the location where they'd been initially transported to, since he'd been unconscious for that. He figured Gregory would be up for joining him and hoped that he would run across Rose on the way. It might go a ways towards mending things with her if he could show her that he'd made progress in getting them back to the TARDIS. Supposing, of course, that his detector actually worked.

Gregory was indeed interested in his device, but begged off testing it that evening as he'd already made plans with his husband. He promised to accompany the Doctor the following morning if he liked. The other members of the science team were similarly indisposed or gone from their labs. Most people were busy getting ready for the festival that would begin the next evening and last three days. Preparations had been underway for much of the past two weeks, given that this year's celebrations would be more elaborate than usual, with it being the twentieth anniversary of the first residents' arrival.

The public square was particularly crowded as the Doctor walked back from the science building. Around him, people were stringing additional twinkling lights and setting up stalls at the edges of the picnic area. He spotted Pasha sitting in a group of residents who all looked to be of similar age at one of the picnic tables; he had his arm around a blonde haired woman and was laughing at something. The Doctor felt a spike of jealousy surge within him and started to head over towards the group when the woman turned her head and he saw that it wasn't Rose. Cursing himself, he did an about face and fled the square before anyone could stop him to talk.

He ended up in a disused alley, picking his way carefully to avoid tripping over the uneven ground. This was as good a place as any to switch on the device. In the very least, he could get baseline readings of the background energy signatures inside the barrier. He located the appropriate button on the detector and powered it up.

The initial data didn't make any sense at all so he gave it a solid thwack with his palm; it chirped obediently and a steady stream of numbers started scrolling across the tiny screen he'd taken from a broken graphics calculator. He frowned as he read them, turning slowly in a circle to determine if the signal got any stronger in any particular direction. Some of the numbers matched those that he'd seen in the TARDIS just before they'd ventured out on to the surface of that dusty blue planet, otherwise he'd suspect that the device was malfunctioning. There was something else about the data though. Something that struck a cord of fear in the Doctor's gut.

They were positively swimming in residue from artron radiation particles. That was not terribly surprising, given his suspicions that time displacement was involved in the barrier's function. However, the energy patterns he was picking up were extremely rare. So rare in fact, that he only knew of one source for these particular energy signatures. A TARDIS. Whatever this place was, whatever purpose it had been constructed for, it had been done with Time Lord technology.


	10. Festival Night

**Chapter 10**

It was nearly two bells by the time the Doctor returned to the flat. He'd stayed out all night checking and rechecking the readings on his detector and walking through the streets, trying to find any sort of indication as to where the energy was originating from. As he wandered, he'd done his best to push his blunted time senses, straining to pick up anything at all that might tell him if there was a TARDIS nearby. He only succeeded in giving himself a searing headache. Not being able to properly use his Time Lord abilities was maddening.

The efforts had left him exhausted and badly in need of some actual sleep. He hadn't had any in over a week, longer than usual even for him. The temptation to join Rose in the bed was strong but he wasn't sure that he was even welcome there right now. Instead, he flopped on the lime green sofa they'd chosen together at the residential goods facility. It was hideous to look at but remarkably comfortable and long enough for him to stretch out on. He was out like a light mere moments after kicking off his trainers.

Rose found him in the morning, sprawled out like a little kid, using his overcoat as a blanket. It looked as though he'd slept fitfully; his hair was even more mussed than usual and his brow was furrowed even now. Gently, she reached down to smooth back the fringe from his face. She ought to wake him, it was getting close to seven and he'd need time to dress for his shift, but she suspected he hadn't been getting enough rest with all of his energies focused on building his device. Instead, she went to put the kettle on and retreated to the bedroom to finish getting ready herself. He'd wake when it whistled.

In the room, Rose tucked a change of clothes into her bag with her notebook for after her shift. She'd gone with her new girlfriends to the clothing exchange earlier that week to find something fun to wear to the festival. Tonight would be a good night to interview more people since so many of them would be in the square celebrating. She'd tell the Doctor about her project this evening, she decided. It was silly to keep avoiding him; she missed her best mate and he'd be able to help her figure out what could have happened to their kidnappers.

Sweeping her hair up and securing it with an elastic, she returned to the main room after hearing the Doctor's surprised yelp at the sound of the kettle boiling. He was groggily pouring the water into mugs in the kitchen when she entered.

"Good morning, Doctor," she greeted him.

"Morning Rose," came the reply.

She smiled and stepped in to remove her favorite porridge mix from the cupboard, retrieving a second bowl for the Doctor as well. "You ought to go wash up. You've only got about half a bell till the morning shift starts."

He frowned and muttered something about how the science team didn't properly have shifts, exactly, and he could arrive at any time he wished, but he did retreat to the bedroom to get ready. She heard the water turn on in the bath as she sat down to eat her breakfast. She felt better already. It just wasn't the same when she wasn't spending time with him, no matter how frustrating he could be sometimes. He emerged a few minutes later, damp and wearing a dark shirt and trousers. She nudged a bowl of porridge and bananas over to him wordlessly and tried not to follow the droplets of water from the shower that trickled down his throat and under his shirt with her eyes. He caught her looking anyway and gave her that brilliant smile of his, eyes crinkling at their corners. Not for the first time she cursed him for changing his face on her. It was a lot easier to remember that he was much older than she was before. Didn't he know how hard it was to just be friends when he insisted on being so fit and charming all the time?

_Bloody aliens_, she mentally grumbled.

They walked together to their jobs, holding hands without thinking, marveling at the festival decorations that had gone up the previous night, and making plans to meet in the square after their shifts had ended. The Doctor told Rose that he'd completed his detector but said only that he would talk to her about the results once he'd done more testing today. She deserved to hear the truth about his people and why the fact that he'd found evidence of their technology was such a worry for him, but that was a conversation that would require more time and privacy than they had before Rose's shift started. They parted ways and Rose headed to the food processing warehouse with a bounce in her step that had been missing for several weeks.

At the science building, the Doctor went to find Gregory in his lab and show him the data from his detector. Maybe he'd have a suggestion of how they could fine tune the device or use their other sensor equipment to triangulate on the source. Right now it looked as though the energy readings were emanating equally from the barrier itself, but that did them little good in terms of locating a control matrix. If this was indeed a Time Lord project they'd stumbled into, then he suspected they'd have hidden a master console _somewhere_. It irritated him that he hadn't sensed anything so far, but he was beginning to suspect that the city's creators had deliberately designed this place to scramble the senses of time sensitive races. He could think of only a few reasons why, and none of them were good.

* * *

The festival was already in full swing by the time the Doctor left the science building. The normally modestly popular public square was packed with people; many of them already seated in the grassy amphitheater watching the first musical performance of the evening or queuing to sample special, festival-only sweets and nibbles from the stations at the edges of the square. Everyone wore their brightest, most celebratory clothes and mingled in the crowd, greeting friends and neighbors with an amiable cheer that suggested the drinks were flowing plentifully already.

Gregory spotted his husband chatting with Richard and left the Doctor to join them, eager to share the data they'd managed to scrape together that day. The Doctor set out to find Rose only to be temporarily waylaid by Mae Bracewell bearing frothy drinks. It was nearing sunset and he was feeling slightly heady by the time he managed to catch sight of Rose's blonde ponytail in the crowd. She'd switched her normal work clothes for a knee length swingy blue skirt and polka dotted top and was talking with an older woman, _what was her name again, Chantrea?_, in a green dress. His hands moved involuntarily to smooth his hair and adjust his non-existent tie as he walked toward her.

Rose was glad to be done with work for the day, as a large part of her shift had involved delivering food and drink to the festival. Her arms were sore from lifting boxes all morning and afternoon. Some well-deserved hard cider was currently doing its best to ease her aches and pains. She wondered what was keeping the Doctor.

She was just about to start searching for him when Chantrea approached her, looking uncharacteristically agitated.

"Rose, I'm glad I found you. Have you spoken with the Doctor yet?" she asked.

Rose shook her head. "No, I was just about to go look for him, why?"

Chantrea glanced around nervously, even checking over her shoulder, "I really shouldn't say here, but you said he's an expert on this sort of thing... I think I've discovered something he ought to know about." Her eyes caught something or someone in the crowd behind Rose and she hurried off, calling, "come find me later!" as she left. Rose tried to see who it was she had been chasing, but her form was already lost in the sea of partying residents.

Turning back around, Rose was surprised to see the Doctor walking towards her. He had an odd expression on his face but seemed pleased to see her.

"Rose, there you are!" He gave her a loopy grin and closed the distance between them to scoop her up into a hug, twirling her halfway around.

"Oof! Hello Doctor," she managed.

He released her and starred into her eyes for a few beats before suddenly adopting a much more serious tone. "I've found something. We should talk. Not here. Somewhere private."

Rose laughed and said, "you're the second person to say that to me tonight," but the Doctor was too busy looking around to find a place for them to go to notice.

He tugged at her hand and led them out of the square and down an adjacent alleyway that took them further away from the music. They had to walk a fair distance to find a relatively quiet corner free of other residents sneaking off for an uninterrupted snog. The Doctor leaned up against a brick wall and pushed his hands into his pockets, his hunched posture making him seem, of all things, nervous. Rose was starting to become worried by his behaviour.

"Rose," he began uncertainly, "do you remember what I told you about the Time War?"

She frowned, this was not what she'd expected him to say. "Just that it was horrible and that you were the only one of your people to survive, yeah?"

He nodded and chose his next words carefully. "I think I've found something that suggests that whatever Corazón Perdido is, it was built using Time Lord technology."

She gasped, realising that this was important, but not sure what exactly it meant. "But I thought it was all in a time lock?"

His mouth pressed into a thin line, "exactly." He started pacing as he talked, "It's certainly possible that something got left behind, unlikely, but still possible; I mean, I made it out alive after all, and I wasn't even trying to." He moved on quickly before Rose had time to process the full import of that admission. "And under different circumstances, I'd say it's great news, but if there are other Time Lords here, where are they? I should be able to sense them, but I can't. Rose, I can't sense _anything_ right now and if this is a Time Lord creation, that's bad, that's very bad."

"Doctor. I don't think there's anyone still here," Rose said quietly.

He whirled around. "Why do you say that?"

So she told him about her project and the mysterious change in transports just over five years ago. He listened intently and when she finished with her conclusion that the city had been left on autopilot after something happened to its controllers, that something which must've been to do with the Time War, she reasoned, he took her in his arms again, proclaiming, "Rose Tyler, you're brilliant! You are!"

He pulled back from the tight embrace but kept his hands on her arms. Her hazel eyes searched his face when he didn't let her go. The air seemed to crackle around them, that unbidden spark of tension returning in an unexpected rush. Rose's heart caught in her throat as the Doctor's expression shifted and he moved his hand to brush a stray bit of hair back from her face. In his head, long ignored synapses were firing rapidly; he was fighting a losing battle against his sober judgment that this was a bad idea. His hand lingered against her cheek. _Oh sod it, he could be a miserable old man later_, he told himself and bent to press his lips to hers.

He hadn't really meant it to be more than a gentle peck, he'd tell himself later, under the delusional assumption that he had any self control. But damn if either of them regretted it, deepening the kiss until they were pressed tightly together, hands wrapped around their bodies as their mouths worked to capture each other more thoroughly. She tasted of festival sweets and cider and that essential _Rose_ flavour and for as long as he lived, he was never, ever going to let himself forget this moment.


	11. No Accident

**Chapter 11**

Rose clung to the Doctor, savoring the sensation of his cool mouth on her own, his comforting but alien double heartbeat thudding as he pressed against her. Reaching up, she ran her fingers through his soft brown hair and he made a low humming sound of pleasure in his throat and pushed her back up against the building. His hands moved to her hips and teased at the edges of her top. Breaking the kiss briefly, the Doctor stood with her panting for air just as badly as she was for once, his eyes downcast, focused on her midsection where he held her. Slender fingers crept cautiously under her spotted blouse to brush the warm skin beneath. The Doctor's eyes flicked up to meet hers, seeking permission to continue. Swallowing nervously, Rose gave him the slightest of nods and with her hand still on his head, guided him down for another kiss.

He responded as she'd hoped and leaned in, sliding his hands up and under her top. Rose felt wonderful, the touch of her bare skin against his own as intoxicating to the Time Lord as the strongest spirits in the galaxy. Part of him thought that this was a mistake and that an alleyway was hardly the right place for this sort of thing even if it weren't, but right now, he really didn't care. She might be a fragile human girl and he an old fool, but if that was the case, then so be it. He hadn't wanted anything or anyone as badly as he wanted Rose Tyler right now in a very long time. The universe owed him this much.

The universe, however, had other ideas.

The Doctor and Rose were well past the bounds of propriety and perhaps sense, when the background sounds of music, laughter, and conversation were pierced by a terrified scream. The music stopped abruptly and hundreds of voices rose in bewilderment and query. Rose and the Doctor sprung apart guiltily at the sound and turned their heads down the alley towards the source of the noise. A look passed between them and they hurried to investigate, tugging at their disheveled clothes as they ran.

The commotion seemed to be centered around the library. A crowd of people had gathered at its entrance, murmuring and straining to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that had happened. Rose followed the Doctor as he pushed through the throng of onlookers, a sick feeling building in the pit of her stomach. She could think of only one person who would've been in the library tonight with the festival going on outside.

Inside the library, a smaller group of people stood in a half-circle surrounding something laying on the floor of the reading room. To one side, a couple of people were comforting a distraught woman, likely the source of the earlier scream, who was relaying the tale of her discovery between hiccoughing sobs. Rose recognised her, she was one of the two assistant librarians. The feeling of dread got worse. Grimly, she pressed forward, breaking through the final wall of people standing between her and the body. (Because what else could it be?) Rose stopped short, her fears confirmed.

Her friend Chantrea lay on the smooth marble floor in a heap, limbs contorted in a way that no living person's would, a small quantity of blood pooling at her head.

Corazón Perdido did have a small police force of sorts, mostly to sort out disputes between residents and break up the occasional fight, but none of them had gotten there yet, meaning there was no one to stop the Doctor from walking on the scene and taking charge. Not that, from the looks of things, anyone else really wanted to be in charge.

The Doctor approached the body carefully, making note of everything he saw. From her position and injuries, he'd say she fell. Glancing up, he spotted a broken railing above them on the fourth floor. He checked for a pulse, just in case, but there was none. She was still quite warm and he'd seen her talking to Rose not more than an hour previously; she hadn't been here long. Her right hand was curled tightly, like she'd been clutching something when she fell, but it was empty now, curious. He frowned, stepping back to pace the distance from her body to the edge of the overhang from the second floor balcony. He calculated the trajectory from the fourth floor; a bit too far for a straight drop.

"Stay put, no one touch anything!" the Doctor commanded and bounded up the stairs to have a closer look at that railing.

The railing was constructed of simple wooden dowels a couple inches in diameter secured by brass fittings to posts every few feet. Where Chantrea had fallen, the topmost rail had cracked and splintered completely through, the second one below it had bowed out partially as well. It would have come about level with her knees. It appeared that she had fallen against the railing and toppled over backwards when it broke. Despite their age, the other sections of railing seemed solid enough. She'd had to have hit that railing with some force to fracture it, and there was hardly enough room up here between it and the bookshelves to get a proper run up.

Could've been an accident, but he doubted it. Someone had pushed her.

The actual Corazón police arrived at that point and the Doctor was politely, but firmly asked to leave after he'd conveyed his findings and suspicions to them. They cleared the library and everyone was urged to return to the festival. Most did, but the air of celebration had been tainted by the death and drunken revelry had been replaced with worried conversations speculating as to what had happened. When the musicians resumed their duties it was with a decidedly more somber tone.

The Doctor collected Rose from where she'd been talking with the assistant librarian who'd discovered Chantrea's body. Her eyes were red and she looked miserable. He wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders and gently led her back to their flat. Tonight, he could let the police handle things. He trusted Rose to have gotten the full story from the woman and there'd been no one else for them to interview. As much as it pained the Doctor to walk away from a mystery, the victim had been Rose's friend and right now she needed him more.

In the flat, he guided her to the sofa and set about fixing them both some almost-tea, a habit of crisis management picked up from centuries of association with human companions from Great Britain. Heaven forbid the world come to an end without a cuppa.

"Doctor. She told me, right before... she, she told me she'd found something. Something that she needed to tell us both." Rose looked pointedly at the Doctor. "But especially _you_. She didn't want to tell me at the festival and asked me to find her later. She seemed really upset. What if whatever it was she found out got her killed?"

The Doctor brought her a cup of not-quite-but-nice-try-tea and sat next to her on the sofa. "It's possible. I certainly don't think her death was an accident. It looks like someone pushed her in to that railing, I'm afraid." He wondered what Chantrea could possibly have wanted to tell him of all people, he'd never spoken more than a few words to the woman. "Any idea why she wanted to talk to me?"

Rose frowned, "she said something about you being an 'expert in this sort of thing' but other than that, I've no idea. She's been working with me on my interview project. Maybe it's something to do with how people were being transported to the city?"

She looked alarmed. "Do you think there's someone here in the city that doesn't want anyone digging in to how people got here?"

The Doctor considered this. "Maybe. But you're the one that's been doing most of the digging. And it still wouldn't explain why she thought I'd be the expert to talk to." He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. "Tomorrow you and I will investigate. See if we can't figure out what she was trying to tell us. For now though, I think some rest would do you good."

Rose nodded slowly, exhaustion and stress sapping the energy from her movements. They retreated to the bedroom and climbed in to the bed together, the Doctor holding her tight until she drifted off to sleep. He stayed in the bed with her rather than get up as he usually would, stroking her hair gently and thinking.


	12. Breaking and Entering

**Chapter 12**

Rose was back in the TARDIS again but something was very wrong. She'd just been in the library looking for Chantrea to ask her a question. She had followed a faint sound of humming to a narrow metal door that stood partially open just past the card catalogue desk; stepping through it, she suddenly found herself here. It looked like she was in the console room but everything had changed. The familiar coral struts and rounded console covered in a myriad of switches, levers, knobs, and buttons had been replaced by hard angles and steel latticework with a smooth touch panel interface. The time rotor glowed a sickly yellow and Rose could feel the living machine radiating pain. Something was hurting it and it had been all alone and calling out for help for so long.

There had to be something she could do. "What do you need from me?" she asked desperately, "I know you're hurting; I want to make it stop. Please, tell me how to help!"

The machine shook and when Rose put out a hand to touch the console, it sent a wave of anguish and burning current up her arm. With the pain came jumbled images of thousands of worlds; beautiful, terrible, wonderful worlds, so vibrant and _alive_ and then gone, torn from existence and leaving raw, jagged holes of wrongness in the universe. It was far too much for her to hold onto in her mind.

Rose woke with a terrified yelp and the dream TARDIS vanished.

Eyes blurred by sleep and unshed tears, Rose groped blindly at the blankets in a frantic attempt to escape the remnants of the nightmare. She calmed when a familiar arm reached out and held her fast, the Doctor's voice reassuring her that she was safe, he was there to protect her. She made a conscious effort to slow her breathing and rapid pulse. It had only been a dream; likely her subconscious' attempt at processing the shock of Chantrea's death and her feelings of helplessness at their situation. Still, as the faint visions echoed in her head, she shuddered. It felt like she'd been given a warning.

It was still very early in the morning, the sky brightening but sun still below the horizon, giving everything in the small bedroom a washed out quality like an overexposed photograph. The Doctor was leaned over her with a concerned look on his face, hair mussed and hanging down, just begging to be touched. So she did, reaching up to brush it back without thinking. He didn't move away.

"Doctor."

"Rose," he gave her a half smile, "are you all right?"

"I think so. Had a dream about the TARDIS again." She bit her lip, "I think maybe she's trying to get through to us from the other side of the barrier. Something's wrong, she's in so much pain, Doctor." Rose closed her eyes tightly. "We've got to find a way out of here."

His hands were on her hair this time, slow and deliberate. "We will, we will. I think I'm making progress, the Time Lords would've had a control matrix somewhere nearby. We just have to find it. We shouldn't be stuck here much longer." He didn't mention his fear that the matrix was only accessible from outside of city barrier, but Rose could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

Rose opened her eyes again to look at him and suddenly recalled what else had happened last night, before they'd been interrupted by tragedy. They'd always been close and if she was being honest with herself, she'd fallen love with him a very long time ago, back when he had another face and a suspiciously northern accent. There'd been moments where she'd been certain that her feelings were reciprocated, only to be followed by the Doctor's usual evasion when things came too close to any actual admissions or overt acts. Their recent fight had been a perfect example of this.

Instead, they danced around the subject like the proverbial elephant in the room, holding hands, flirting, and even sleeping in the same bed while pretending that they were simply best mates. Last night had been a turning point. _He'd_ _kissed her_. He'd done rather more than just kiss her, really. And they didn't have the convenient excuse of an involuntary possession to let them dismiss it this time. How far might they have gone if they hadn't been interrupted?

A similar thought must've occurred to the Doctor because he swallowed thickly and shifted nervously back toward his side of the bed to put a bit more distance between them. Rose sighed mentally, she should've known. Here it comes, any second now he'd open his mouth and try to babble his way out of sitting still and actually addressing what last night meant for their relationship. For an nine hundred year old alien, sometimes the Doctor could be such a bloke.

"Rose," he began, "if we go now, we can probably get another look around the library before anyone else is up. See if we can't dig up whatever it was your friend wanted to tell us before she was killed."

Rose sat up and pushed back the covers from her legs. Priorities. She shouldn't be sitting here worrying about snogging the Doctor when there was a killer on the loose and a TARDIS to get back to. There'd be plenty of time to have a heart to hearts with him afterwards.

* * *

Dawn had arrived in Corazón Perdido as the Doctor and Rose hurried through the city streets on their covert mission, the Doctor's long overcoat casting an even longer shadow in the early morning light. The doors to the library had been locked shut against curious intruders but even without his sonic available, the Doctor had come prepared and popped the lock the old fashioned way. He retrieved a torch from his pocket and they slipped inside, headed for the library's offices beyond the main reading room.

Rose led the way to Chantrea's door, and was surprised to find it also locked when she tried the knob. She stepped aside to let the Doctor work his magic with the mechanism. Soon they were inside her friend's remarkably tiny personal office, starring at the prominent heavy wooden desk that occupied the majority of the space not swallowed up by books or stacks of papers. It was cluttered and cramped, but orderly in its own way. Rose had seen Chantrea walk in and retrieve items buried deep in its numerous piles without a moment's hesitation many times. There were no windows through which passersby might spot their light so she flicked the wall switch, turning on the teardrop shaped lamp that hung from the ceiling.

"It doesn't look like anyone else has been in here yet," she said softly, "nothing seems to be obviously out of place."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, "how could you possibly tell?"

"I'm in here all the time; it always looks like this," she informed him.

He snorted and began examining the papers on the desk. Rose set about checking the bookshelves for anything that looked strange. Many of the books were here awaiting repairs as age and repeated lendings had taken their toll. Chantrea had a small assortment of favorites, well-worn duplicates and circulation rejects, stored for personal use on the lower shelves; she'd called them her 'garden of inspiration' when Rose had asked about the eclectic collection which contained everything from poetry, history texts, saucy romance novels, architectural guides, and biographies to fairy tales. If Chantrea had kept a diary, it would be here, she thought.

Next to a beautiful hand-painted volume entitled _Legends of the Pandorica_ Rose found a slim wooden box, secured with a combination lock. It looked like it ought to be coated in dust but it wasn't; it had been handled recently. That seemed promising.

"Doctor, take a look at this," Rose said, holding the box out to him. He looked up from the desk at her over the dark framed glasses perched on his nose.

"Oh, hello." The Doctor took it from her and held it up near his ear as he carefully turned the tiny numbered tumblers. A few minutes of fiddling and... "Ha!" The latch popped open with an audible 'click' in his hands. Rose stepped closer to him as he lifted the lid. They both froze in place when they saw what was contained inside; atop a small packet of faded yellow envelopes sat the unmistakable leather wrist strap of a time agent's vortex manipulator.

"Doctor, is that..." Rose trailed off breathlessly.

He lifted it from the case and undid the snaps to reveal the device's keypad interface; its power indicator was still glowing. "Our ticket out of here?" he finished for her, "yes, I think it very well might be."


	13. Than Never To Have Loved At All

**Chapter 13**

"What would Chantrea possibly have a vortex manipulator for?" Rose asked. "And if it works, why was she still here?"

The Doctor frowned and looked up from the device. "That's a good question." He secured the strap to his own wrist. "Shall we find out?"

Rose gave him a dubious look. "Sure we ought to be testing it ourselves like this? Is it safe?"

"Of course it's safe! Well, probably. Safe-ish. More or less." He held out his arm to her and raised his eyebrows expectantly. "Grab hold; it'll be fine, trust me. I'm a Time Lord, time travel is my specialty."

"Says the man who brought me back a year late after he promised to have me home the next morning and missed Ian Dury by a century," she teased but placed her hand on the manipulator.

"Oi! Those were isolated incidents! And I've apologized for the missing year. Besides," he added, "those were in the TARDIS; she's got a mind of her own sometimes. The vortex manipulator may be much less sophisticated technology but that also makes it dead simple to operate comparatively."

He raised his hand to press the activation button, pausing to meet Rose's eyes. "Ready? Here we go!" There was a blinding flash and the sensation of being spun about like a rag doll in a washing machine before the Doctor and Rose were dropped to the ground. They hadn't moved, in space at least; they were still in Chantrea's office.

Rose groaned and held her head. The Doctor's time senses were ringing, the first real feedback he'd had from them in over two months now. He sat very still for a moment, holding his breath as he waited to see if this meant they'd returned to functional status. Disappointingly, the sensation in his head faded back to the muffled status quo it had been at for the duration of their stay in the city. He was just as time blind as ever and instead of breaking free of their prison, they'd evidently bounced off of the temporal barriers enclosing them.

"Blimey. That didn't go entirely to plan, now did it?" The Doctor turned his attention to Rose. "Are you all right?" She nodded and the Doctor rose and helped her to her feet as well.

"Still, not a total loss. Now we know why your friend didn't use it to leave. Perhaps with some modifications, I can still use it to get us out of here. Question is, though, does this even have anything to do with her death?"

"Maybe she found it somewhere in the city?" Rose suggested. "You said it yourself, time travel is your specialty, maybe that's why she wanted to talk to you especially."

The Doctor considered this. "Could be. But why not just bring it to the science team outright? Why the secrecy?"

"What if she took it from someone? I mean, if we're assuming it got her killed, maybe she didn't want anyone knowing she was the one that had it."

He nodded slowly. "Not a bad thought. If she'd stolen it, it might make sense to share it with someone she trusted first." He thought about this for a moment. "Hang on, what exactly did you tell her about me?"

Rose shook her head. "Not that much really, just that we'd been traveling together for a while, visiting all sorts of places."

"You didn't tell her what I am or about the TARDIS, did you?" he asked.

"No, I learned my lesson. Since Adam, I don't really tell people about the whole time and space thing unless I have to." Rose made a face.

"Then how did she know I was the expert she needed?" the Doctor wondered aloud.

Rose frowned this time. Why hadn't she noticed this? Had she accidentally let something about the Doctor or time travel slip? Chantrea had always seemed to just know some things though. Could she have found out some other way? Maybe she could read minds? Rose had just assumed she was human, since she looked like one, but then so did the Doctor and she knew for a fact that not all of the residents were human.

The sound of bells carried through the walls from outside. They needed to hurry or they'd be caught. They made one last attempt to locate anything of interest in the small office. Sadly, nothing helpful turned up and they left the library before any other residents would be on the streets to notice them, having returned Chantrea's wooden box to its shelf minus one vortex manipulator.

The Doctor resolved to keep their discovery to himself for a few days at least and pay careful attention to anyone who went poking about the library. If Chantrea had indeed been killed for the device, then her killer would surely come looking for it soon.

The next obvious place to investigate would be her residence, but he didn't know where it was or how to gain access to it without risking some uncomfortable questions from the police. It was a shame he couldn't just flash his psychic paper and walk right in like usual. Rose said that Chantrea had been working with her on her project to interview residents though, maybe they could use that as a pretext to get in to her flat somehow. Have Rose say that she was retrieving files perhaps. They would likely have to be patient and wait a bit until the police had a chance to have a go at the place first though.

* * *

The next couple days were less than eventful, investigation-wise. The festival had continued in subdued fashion and finished with a memorial for Chantrea. A large percentage of the residents, and certainly everyone that Rose and the Doctor knew, were in attendance. In addition to her welcome committee duties, Mae Bracewell was evidently the equivalent of Corazón Perdido's mayor and thus had the unhappy job of organizing the event. A small number of people spoke, including Rose and the two assistant librarians. Despite having been in the city for nearly twenty years as one of the Bon Venture passengers, Chantrea had no family and very few close friends. She'd been generally well liked though as near as the Doctor could figure. No one he spoke to had any inkling of a reason someone might have wanted to hurt her.

It did not come as a terrible surprise when, a few days after the memorial, it was announced that her death had been ruled accidental. The police cited a lack of witnesses or motive, and the fact that the medical team had evidently found she'd consumed a rather high quantity of alcohol prior to her fall. When the Doctor pressed one of the investigators, he'd been told that it looked as though the railing in the library had been weak and it had broken when she'd stumbled against it and that unless he had any solid evidence to the contrary, the police were not interested in panicking residents with a prolonged search for a murderer who in all likelihood did not exist.

Rose was furious when he told her what they'd said. "What do you mean, they've just given up?"

"It looks that way. I suppose it's possible that we're mistaken, and it really was nothing more than an accident."

"You don't believe that," she said, hazel eyes flashing with anger.

"No, not really, but we can't rule it out," he admitted. "The police are right about one thing; we haven't much to go on at all. No one saw her or anyone else go in or out of that library. We've only got one possible theory for a motive. The only thing left to do now is to talk to every person in this city who knew her, one at a time, and see if any of their stories don't match up."

He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and rubbed his face with his hand. "It's going to take time though, and I should really get working on modifying that vortex manipulator. I may be able to use it to disable the temporal shielding in the barrier long enough to get a signal, or maybe even a person, out and locate the primary control matrix."

"So you're saying you think we should give up too?" Rose asked him.

The Doctor sighed. "Not give up exactly. It's just, well, I know how badly you want to get back to the TARDIS, I do too. I'm only suggesting a little division of labour. You've been asking questions for weeks already; you're good at it. If anyone is capable of finding out who killed Chantrea, it's you."

Rose sat across from him in the other chair. "I suppose that makes sense; you do the tinkering while I do the talking. Still, I wish we didn't have to split up; I really missed solving a mystery together. 'S not the same without you."

He nodded, either oblivious or willfully ignorant of the subtext creeping into the conversation. "I can get started tonight, if you like. Richard or Gregory might still be at the lab to help." He stood to leave, already working on the calculations in his head. "If I can reverse the polarity of the..."

"Doctor," Rose interrupted him, "wait." He stopped and turned to face her, a guilty look crossing his eyes when he saw her pleading expression. "Are you just going to just pretend it never happened?"

Caught by her penetrating stare, the Doctor found himself feeling a sudden kinship with animals who chewed off their own limbs to escape a trap. He was absolute rubbish at this sort of conversation on the best of days. He had no one but himself to blame for this one too; he'd been the one who initiated the kiss, the one who let his feelings override his judgment. One of the reasons he'd been avoiding talking to Rose about what had happened between them the night of the festival was that he had yet to properly make up his mind as to whether it had been a mistake or not. On the one hand, he didn't get involved with his human companions for a reason and it would only make it harder on him when it all came to its inevitable end. On the other, he'd fallen stupidly, irrevocably in love with this particular pink and yellow human and wanted very badly to kiss her again.

He swallowed and shook his head at her. She left her seat and stood just in front of him, within arm's reach. "Rose, what happened the other night wasn't... er... that is, it shouldn't... I don't think..."

She held her fingers up to his lips to silence him. "You don't have to explain, just listen for a sec, okay?" He closed his mouth and nodded. "You'd think it'd be bleedin' obvious, what I'm about to tell ya, but you keep remindin' me that you aren't a regular human bloke, so I'm just gonna say it. 'Sides, some things just need to be said."

She took a deep breath and dropped her hand. "I... love you Doctor. I have for a long time." She turned her head, unable to keep looking him in the eyes as she spoke. "And I remember what you told me about how much it hurts to see the people you care about age and die. How I could spend the rest of my life with you but not the other way round. I know you were trying to warn me not to expect anything more than friendship from you. At the time I thought it was just you trying to let me down gently, but I think we both know now that I'm not the only person you were trying to convince."

She paused to see if he'd interrupt her, but he didn't deny it. "I know you've got your reasons for holding back, and if you're sure you want us to go back to the way we were, then I can respect that. But you can't just kiss me like that and then pretend nothing happened. It's not fair."

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something then but she held up her hand again. "Let me finish. 'Cause Sarah Jane said something to me that I think she should've said to you too; she told me that there are some things worth getting your heart broken for." She sniffled and wiped at her eyes. "I think you're worth it and I haven't even got a spare heart like you have."

The Doctor reached out and pulled Rose in close to his chest, hands rubbing soothing circles on her back, leaning down to inhale her perfect, comforting Rose scent. His Rose. His fantastic, brilliant, wonderful Rose. She knew him so well and adored him still. She was so far beyond anything he deserved.

He'd originally made his rules to try to keep himself from getting hurt as badly when he lost them, but he was beginning to doubt that it was possible for it to hurt any worse than it would if he lost her now._ 'Tis better to have loved and lost_... Perhaps it was time he gave himself permission to break a few rules.


	14. What If

**Chapter 14**

The Doctor brought a hand up to Rose's chin and gently lifted it so that he could look her in the eyes when he said this. She needed to see that he was being completely sincere. "What if I don't want us to go back to the way we were before?" She stared at him wonderingly.

"What if I told you that you are the most beautiful, courageous, marvelous creature that I have ever had the privilege to know in the whole wide universe and that I have been a fool to ever let you believe I thought otherwise?"

Rose inhaled sharply and blushed at this unexpected praise. The Doctor cupped her face in both hands. "Rose Tyler," he continued, "I'm afraid you're going to end up breaking both of my hearts. And what's worse, I'm going to let you." And with that, he kissed her soundly.

It felt very much like the kiss in the alleyway had, that is, rather wonderful, but something about it was just so much more... purposeful. A warm fluttery sensation was building in her belly and Rose wasn't quite sure if her feet were still planted firmly on the ground. She could scarcely believe her impromptu confession had elicited this sort of response from the Doctor. She'd been so certain that he'd close himself off again and tell her how very sorry he was. Before they'd been trapped here, never in her wildest imagination would Rose have thought that the Doctor would admit his feelings and kiss her like this. She fervently hoped that this wasn't all just a dream.

For once, the voice in his head was silent. The scolding conscience that told him to keep his distance, that indulging in his infatuation was foolhardy and the quickest path to further pain and loss had gone. He'd made his choice. He loved her, she loved him. They needed each other.

He'd been a broken man after the Time War and she'd seen through his brash exterior to the lonely man within and made him better. He'd already given his life for her once and would do it again if he had to. When he'd regenerated without warning into a completely different man, she'd been scared, but remained at his side. Stranded on an impossible planet, orbiting a black hole, she'd been the one comforting _him_ that they'd be all right in the end and it was his faith in her that had allowed them to defeat the ancient evil that lurked in the pit. Now trapped here, in this city outside of time, for months, she'd not given up either, even when it seemed hopeless. How could he not love her?

As they kissed, the Doctor moved his hands lower, tracing the slope of her throat, down further still to brush against her breasts and curve of her waist. She leaned in closer and slid her own hands under the hem of his jumper, drawing a surprised but pleased rumble from deep in his chest when her warm fingers made contact with his skin. Emboldened by his response, she proceeded to explore the hard planes of his body, tracing fire along his nerve endings everywhere she touched. The Doctor was slim, but wiry, and stronger than he looked. She wanted to reassure herself that he was solid, that this was really happening. He was real and it was.

There were no screams or catastrophes to interrupt them this time and they were in the comfort and privacy of their own flat. After two years of flirtation, near misses, denial, and quiet longing, they'd finally managed to be honest with one another and express their feelings physically. It felt incredible.

The Doctor released her lips reluctantly and leaned his forehead against hers, panting for air. Things were swiftly headed towards a rather definite point of no return. Her attentions were causing long disused portions of his own anatomy to awaken. He would very much like to continue, but they were moving rather fast and he needed to know for certain that this is what she wanted as well.

"Rose," he gasped, "we should, we should probably stop."

"Why?" she murmured and continued her careful inventory of his now-exposed abdomen.

He groaned and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "Because if we don't stop now, I'm not going to be able to prevent myself from taking you into that bedroom, removing all of your clothes, and having my way with you."

"Good." His eyes snapped open to find her looking at him, biting her lip seductively, flushed and clearly excited by his suggestion. "I thought you'd never ask Doctor," she said huskily.

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up to his hairline and Rose giggled and whispered, "I seem to recall you once promising to show me your moves." He felt his face grow warm and hearts surge again in his chest. _Oh Rassilon_, she was amazing.

She pulled him back into an all encompassing embrace and together they half carried each other, half stumbled towards the bedroom, shedding articles of clothing as they went. By the time they got to the bed, they were down to just knickers and pants, respectively. The Doctor laid her gently on the mattress and proceeded to put his clever fingers and mouth to good use. He'd always wondered what this would be like, for purely scientific reasons, of course.

Just before things progressed all the way, Rose put a hand to his chest. "Doctor," she asked, "before we... we don't need any sort of, erm, protection do we?"

His lips quirked in the barest hint of a smile. "No, I'm not human, remember? Completely different genetics, don't worry, we're safe."

"You look human," she teased with a significant glance downward.

"Oi! You look Time Lord!" He looked mildly insulted.

She grinned and pulled him close again.

Around them, time passed and the universe continued on as ever, planets and stars and galaxies spinning and expanding outward into the cosmos, all oblivious to the momentous event taking place in a little flat preserved within a tiny pocket of time on the surface of an otherwise insignificant blue rock drifting through space around a small hot star at the edge of a great vast emptiness. Somewhere out there in the darkness, so far away, another small blue planet orbited its own yellow star, along with countless other worlds where life clung, thrived, and struggled to carry on. Lives beginning and ending, enduring endless suffering and joy, spread across innumerable locations and times. Everything that ever was and could be.

For a while, the Last of the Time Lords forgot all of this and allowed himself to be happy. Everything else could wait.


	15. Ruminations

**Chapter 15**

Rose woke with a contented smile already on her face and rolled over to find the Doctor laying next to her on the bed, wide awake of course, giving her a delighted grin of his own.

"Mornin'," she greeted him with a yawn.

"Thought you'd never wake up. Considered giving you a nudge earlier, but you're always grumpy at me when I do that. Besides, you're terribly cute when you snore." He waggled his eyebrows at her playfully.

"Oi! I do not snore!" She tossed a pillow at him.

"Do so! C'mon! Up and at 'em, shake a leg, early worm gets the bird, et cetera, et cetera. Or was that the other way round? Hmm..." The Doctor paused and then shook his head. "Never mind birds, I'm making breakfast!" His enthusiasm was infectious.

Rose let him pull her from the bed, whereupon he gave her a proper but altogether too brief kiss before bounding off to the kitchen to get things ready while she dressed. She allowed herself a moment, standing in the bedroom with her fingers lingering on her lips, to try and process everything. Was this going to be the new normal for them then? The Doctor seemed to have returned to his regular manic self, in a better mood than he'd been since their last adventure on the TARDIS. Rose had half expected there would be some awkwardness this morning, but instead he'd been freely affectionate with her and his kiss suggested that he fully intended what they'd done wouldn't be just a one-off.

Last night had been positively brilliant. She wished she'd had the nerve to confess her feelings sooner; had she only known what his ultimate reaction would be. Even as she constantly had to remind herself that he wasn't a human man, all the same, she'd never quite believed him capable of something so ordinary (and so marvelous). For a man who'd once indignantly informed her that he did indeed 'dance' when she'd shown an interest in Captain Jack and, since regenerating, flirted with her almost constantly, he got awfully flustered whenever the suggestion of anything overtly sexual _actually occurring_ arose. Thankfully, it turned out that the Doctor was just as impressive as he always claimed to be when he put his mind to it.

She had half a mind to drag him back to bed and stay there all day. It was a shame they had so much work to do. She needed to go chop vegetables and grill her fellow residents for information about Chantrea and he needed to find a way to get them out of here so they could rescue their TARDIS. Her dreams the last few nights had been nightmare-free but that didn't necessarily mean the danger had passed.

After an extremely quick shower, Rose was tugging on a clean pair of trousers when she had a sudden horrifying thought; if they were successful in their escape efforts and made it back to London, what on Earth was she going to tell her mother? Probably best if they keep their next few visits short. Her mum had a sort of sixth sense about this sort of thing and was already half convinced that she was shagging the Doctor. Who knew what she'd do if she ever found out it was true. Rose would never hear the end of it and the Doctor'd probably be lucky to make it out of the flat alive.

Entering the kitchen, Rose found the Doctor had made each of them a plate piled high with pancakes and sliced fruit and was busy pouring drinks from the kettle. He was wearing the pale blue oxford shirt he'd had on when they arrived in Corazón Perdido with the sleeves rolled up and the dark blue many pocketed trousers that had become his new standby here. He looked positively gorgeous. His face lit up when he saw her and she felt herself blushing in response.

"Mmm. It smells amazing in here Doctor." She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned against his left shoulder. He kissed the top of her head and handed her a steaming mug. "Ta."

They sat down to eat and between mouthfuls of food, the Doctor described in detail his theory about the barrier's encoded wave form variance and temporal shielding and how he planned to modify the vortex manipulator to compensate for this. Rose didn't understand half of it but she knew it helped him to talk through things so she listened and nodded supportively when it seemed appropriate.

On their morning commute to work, there was no discussion of the previous night's activities but the subtle change in body language between them served as silent acknowledgement enough for Rose. He held her just a little bit closer as they walked and watched her carefully out of the corner of his eyes in a way that made her think he was trying to reassure himself that she was real, and wasn't about to be snatched away from him. When they parted ways, he accepted her departing kiss and whispered promise of more later with a suitably hopeful expression and embarrassed flush. Rose hurried off before the temptation to follow her earlier impulse became too much to bear.

The Doctor watched her leave with an unfamiliar lightness in his chest and a parade of indecent thoughts flitting through his mind. That was a hell of a change for him. It'd been ages since he'd given in and let his baser instincts hold sway over his actions; one night in bed with Rose and he was already letting his imagination run rampant.

Not that he'd never had the occasional passing notion about that sort of thing, but when he'd taken lovers in the past, it had usually been out of curiosity (or in one particular case during the war, out of mutual desperate need for comfort). He'd very quickly learned that, especially with human partners, sex complicated matters and made it all the more difficult for either of them to maintain the emotional distance he needed in order to handle their inevitable departure from his life. Very early (well, relatively) in his travels in the TARDIS, he'd made it a rule not to get involved with his companions. It was a rule he'd internalized so thoroughly that, when on occasion, one of them made a pass at him, he often hadn't even seen it coming and as a result, handled things poorly. Regrettably, often when he _did_ sense that feelings of a romantic nature were building it was somehow worse. It was with no small measure of guilt with which he'd pretended not to know how Sarah Jane and a few of the others had truly felt about him.

And it was a rule he'd just broken for Rose. He honestly couldn't say what it was specifically about her that initially drew him in, but she was caring and brilliant and he'd been lost to her charms nearly immediately. Why else would he have gone back to ask her to accompany him again after she'd turned him down the first time? He just knew that she helped fill that gaping maw in his soul and made him feel more alive than he had in centuries. The Time War that had left so many scars on his psyche and loneliness in his life had simultaneously made it that much harder for him to stomach the thought of losing someone else he cared about. It had nonetheless been a tremendous effort of will to keep himself from crossing that line of intimacy with her. His resolve had been steadily eroding for months now; the longer they spent together, the more let himself inch ever closer to that edge, making feeble excuses to himself every step of the way.

In the end, he'd taken that final leap because he realised she was right. And aside from a brief moment of panic after the act, he stood by that conclusion. If he was a goner either way, might as well enjoy it while it lasts. Still, the decision had some rather surprising consequences; namely, how badly he wanted to repeat it.

He'd clearly been spending far too much time around humans, their bad habits were rubbing off on him. Lust was an evolutionary adaptation to be expected of species with much shorter life spans, and hardly characteristic of the dignified Time Lord race. Perhaps it was his status as the last of his kind that, like captive creatures that will only breed within scent of predators, fueled this newfound desire. Or perhaps he'd just forgotten how good it felt to share that with someone he loved.

Humming cheerfully as he ascended the stairs, the Doctor redirected his wayward thoughts to the vortex manipulator he'd placed on his wrist that morning. It felt strange to be wearing it; he'd always scoffed at the crude little devices but now ironically found himself pinning all his hopes of escape on this one. While it was in direct contact with his skin, he could just barely detect the faint buzz of temporal resonance it emitted through the thick blanket of interference his time senses had been under for so long. That made it oddly comforting to have on.

He headed for the lab he and Gregory had been working in together on his detector. No reason not to include the rest of the team on this, what very well might prove the answer to their prolonged quest. Pushing open the door, he was greeted by both Gregory and Richard, whom he discovered were arguing over a lengthy equation scrawled across the chalkboard that predominated the left wall. The Doctor scanned it and, without preamble, walked over to adjust a variable and scribble the correct answer beneath it. Gregory smirked and Richard gave him a scowl before turning to the Doctor.

"Good morning, Doctor. Not that I'm not pleased to have your assistance, but I believe you just cost me a week's cleaning duties in the common room. Gregory here wagered you'd spot our mistake in under half a minute." Richard cocked an eyebrow at his grinning colleague.

Gregory clapped a hand against the Doctor's shoulder. "Just doesn't know ya as well as I do," he said with a friendly wink, "I shoulda bet him more than a week's worth." He gave the Doctor an appraising eye. "What's got you in such a good mood this morning? Late night with Rose?" he suggested jokingly.

The Doctor coughed awkwardly in surprise and felt heat beginning to creep up his neck. Gregory's eyebrows rose and multihued irises shifted toward an amused yellow; he hadn't been expecting to be right. Richard let out a hearty guffaw of laughter. Before either of them could comment further, the Doctor scrambled to change the subject with the one thing he could be sure would grab their attention.

Shaking his head and speaking rapidly, he blurted out, "I've found something that may be the key to unlocking the city's temporal barrier." He held up his left arm for them to see. "This," he said as he unsnapped the cover, "is a Time Agency vortex manipulator."

He had their undivided attention now. Richard had gone perfectly still at this pronouncement and Gregory stared at it in unmasked, wide-eyed disbelief. Evidently they were familiar with what the device did. That would make the explanations simpler at least.

"Where did you find it?" Richard asked breathlessly, his eyes never leaving the manipulator on the Doctor's wrist.

"Plucked it out of a community bin while rummaging for parts," the Doctor lied. "Must've been picked up somewhere in the city by someone on the salvage crew who didn't know what they'd found."

"It seems to be in sound working order, but it won't pass through the barrier without some modifications. However, I think with a little effort and some careful calculations, we may be able to use it to punch a hole through the temporal shielding and get out of here." He grinned, eyes flashing bright with excitement. "Shall we get to work?"


	16. Cloak and Dagger

**Chapter 16**

Amrit was his usual chatty self, but not, as it happened, a terribly useful source of information about Chantrea. He'd lived in the city for twelve years but had never been much of a reader, so his knowledge of the former librarian had been extremely limited. He sympathized with Rose's desire to see that her friend's death not go unchallenged, but there simply wasn't anything he could tell her. It was a very similar story with her other coworkers, even those who'd been passengers on the Bon Venture. Chantrea had led a fairly quiet life in Corazón Perdido and made little to no impression on anyone on the starliner before their transport.

Curiously, it was Tatiana who provided her with the only interesting tidbit about Chantrea that might be relevant to her death, and perhaps explain the utter lack of impression she'd made on the residents over the years. The Silurian woman had informed Rose with a hiss that the reason no one knew anything about Chantrea was that she'd been a _spy_.

* * *

Several hours later, the Doctor was no nearer to breaking through the temporal barriers that surrounded the city than he'd been before. He was beginning to become frustrated. He was almost positive he'd done the calculations correctly; it was as though the shields were recalibrating to counter his every move, a security feature he wouldn't put past his wary Time Lord predecessors, but a devilishly irritating one to work against.

He still couldn't fathom why the Time Lords, pompous advocates of strict non-interference, might have built such an air-tight prison only to populate it with the lost souls of history and then abandon it. Actually, he thought that Rose's suggestion that the Time War had been involved was likely on the mark, but he hadn't the faintest clue as to how.

After what was probably the fifth disgruntled kick to the cabinetry and snarl of choice Gallifreyan phrasing, Richard told him that he ought to go home.

"One more night's rest isn't goin' to kill ye. I can run more numbers tonight. We'll all take a fresh crack at it in the mornin'." He gestured to the vortex manipulator that had been wired up to several additional components in the lab. "This lot'll be here waiting."

Sighing, the Doctor stepped back and raised his hands in defeat. He was right, of course. It wasn't doing them any good to swear at the device and abuse the furnishings. He needed to think of a new angle of attack, something clever, rather than trying to overcome the shields with brute force. Reluctantly, the Doctor assented and headed back to the flat; night had fallen while they worked and it occurred to him that Rose must be wondering what had become of him.

Rose had just about decided to go over to the science building to look for him when he walked in the door. She'd stopped by Chantrea's old flat after her shift ended to do some reconnaissance but, like in the office, there'd been very little of interest. She did discover that her friend had kept even more books in her small home and had secretly been a fairly prolific painter. She recognised several scenes from around the city in her work among the more abstract pieces and paintings of things that she thought must've been from her friend's former life. On an easel near the window sat her last unfinished piece; it showed the rough outline of a doorway, surrounded by indistinct shadows and the silhouette of someone approaching it.

Something about the image seemed familiar to Rose and on an impulse, she'd smuggled the painting out of the flat and brought it home. It now sat perched on the kitchen counter where she could stare at it while she waited for the Doctor to return.

The Doctor's mood improved considerably when he saw Rose again and thought about the dramatic shift in their relationship that had taken place the previous evening. He greeted her with a kiss that ended up being more prolonged than he'd initially intended. Not that that was a bad thing.

"Doctor," she said when they paused so she could catch her breath, "you're late. I ate without you."

He chuckled and guided her to the sofa where they could talk. They settled in and she described her efforts to interview her coworkers about Chantrea while he stroked her hair. When she told him that she'd learned the librarian may have led a former life of intrigue he stilled and furrowed his brow.

"I suppose that _could_ provide an explanation as to how she found a vortex manipulator. Or," he considered, "it could've been hers to begin with."

"Sure, but why kill her now if it was?" Rose replied.

"Indeed."

"I'm guessing you didn't manage to break through the barrier today, or you'd have said something by now."

He shook his head. "Afraid not. It feels close though... I've almost got it figured, it's just eluding me at the moment."

She sighed and slumped against him. "It feels like we've been stuck here forever."

The Doctor agreed but he wasn't sure what else he could say to that so he bent down and kissed her softly. He might not have all the answers at the moment, but at least he had an idea of how he might make her feel better. She shifted in his arms to kiss him back and soon they were retreating to the bedroom by mutual assent.

They took their time with it, removing each article of clothing with tantalizing deliberation. The Doctor regarding her like her a fragile present he was afraid might shatter in his hands as he unwrapped it. Rose undid the buttons on his shirt slowly and pushed it off of his shoulders as he leaned in to trail kisses down from her jaw line to collar bone. She whimpered as he moved his mouth lower and ran her hands through his thick hair, ruffling it. He made a small noise of appreciation in his throat and set about driving her mad with anticipation.

It was much later when the Doctor delicately removed himself from Rose's sleeping arms and padded silently to the kitchen to make himself a cuppa. Tugging the kettle from the stove just before it could whistle and disturb Rose, he sat waiting for his not-quite-tea to cool and thought about the temporal shielding problem. Maybe he could trick the system by splitting the signal... if he could only figure out what algorithm it was using to recalculate the shield frequency modulation.

As he contemplated this, his eyes fell to the unfinished painting sitting on the counter top. Something about it... Rose had said that she thought Chantrea had been working on it before she died. He frowned and squinted at it. He needed his glasses but they were still in the pocket of his trousers on the floor in the bedroom. The Doctor had a niggling feeling he'd seen it before. But where?

He went back to the bedroom to retrieve his trousers and trainers. Rose was sleeping quietly and clutching the pillow he'd left behind close to her chest. He slipped out and closed the door carefully behind him. It was halfway through securing the second button on his shirt when it came to him. He knew why that painting seemed so familiar.

"Oh, I am thick!" he announced to the empty room.

The Doctor was out the door like a shot. He needed to get to the science building right away. If he was wrong, then no harm done checking; if he was right... he'd just made a terrible mistake.


	17. Oncoming Storm

**Chapter 17**

The trouble with perception filters, even the very best ones, was that they only worked if you didn't know what you were looking for. Which is why it helped, if you were going to use one, to make sure what you're hiding looked as innocuous and not-hidden as possible. Simplicity worked best. Nothing says "Secret Things In Here!" quite as well as a hidden door in a basement or rotating bookcase. If you teleport hundreds of people into an abandoned city with no exits, the first thing they're going to be looking for is a way out. But if you're clever, they won't be looking for the right sort of things and the perception filter will work beautifully so long as you don't do anything to draw anyone's attention to it.

The real problem comes in when you're dealing with someone who knows to look for a perception filter _itself_. It was a bit of a trick to sense them, but with some psychic training and determination, it was possible. And this is what the Doctor was cursing himself for as he ran through the city streets. Normally he was fairly good at picking up on that faint twinge of mental blankness where shouldn't be any that tended to give away their presence. He'd been so distracted by his muzzled time senses and trying to pick up energy signatures that he'd neglected to even consider the possibility that the Time Lords had used a simple perception filter. It had only been one of the standard features of _every single TARDIS_ since well before his ancient Type 40 had been grown.

Clearly someone in Corazón Perdido _had_ known to look for one though. What's worse, it had been in front of him the whole time. He walked past it every day. He hadn't recognised it at first because in the painting, the doorway was flooded with yellow light, light that shouldn't have been there. But once he remembered where he'd seen it before, it was that light that made him realise he'd missed something vital, because the mysterious and familiar 'doorway' in Chantrea's painting was none other than the broken lift that sat unused and ignored in the science building's lobby.

But the thing was, _no one had ever actually said it was broken_. They'd all just assumed it was and taken the stairs without a second thought. It was odd, since a lift would've come in handy for moving equipment around. There were other buildings in the city that had working lifts and certainly, if _anywhere_ in the city had a more than adequate power supply to run one, it was the science team's building. Yet no one ever questioned it. The Doctor certainly hadn't. Until now.

That painting had raised a very important question: Why might Chantrea have been painting someone walking into a lift that no one ever used or even noticed? The Doctor didn't think it was just a coincidence that it had been right before her death. She'd been upset and had told Rose she'd discovered something that she wanted him specifically to know about. What could be hidden in plain sight beneath the science building that required his expertise other than the missing Time Lord control matrix? She'd been killed not because of the vortex manipulator, but because she'd found out what lay beyond that lift, he was sure of it. Someone in Corazón Perdido was protecting a secret and the Doctor suspected he knew who it was now.

Perhaps someone who'd grown up on the peaceful planet of Ellohem, whose primary export prior to its untimely destruction in the war had been _perception filter devices_.

The Doctor wanted to be wrong, but the more he thought about it, the more the pieces started to click in to place. Little niggling concerns, passing comments that had seemed strange at the time but he'd dismissed as irrelevant suddenly took on greater significance. He just couldn't figure why, when they'd been working so hard to find a way to get through or dismantle the barrier surrounding the city, Richard would hide this from everyone.

If he was right, and Richard had been the one responsible for Chantrea's death, then his keen interest in the vortex manipulator earlier began to seem rather sinister. What he'd thought a friendly offer to allow the other four members of the team a break for the evening may have been for the sole purpose of getting the device to himself. To what end, the Doctor hadn't the faintest idea, but he doubted it would be good.

All of this could be merely wild conjecture of course, but there was really only one way to find out. He needed to see for himself where that lift entrance led.

The Doctor skidded to a halt outside the squat concrete building and paused to resettle his overcoat on his shoulders properly. He'd pulled it on rather hastily as he'd left the flat without bothering to finish buttoning his shirt. He was just going to check the lab to see if the vortex manipulator was still there and then investigate the lift. And possibly confront a man he'd thought was a friend about a murder. Simple, really. He raked a hand through his hair and opened the door.

The lobby was dark and empty this late at night, no mysterious light emanating from the lift doors or anywhere else for that matter. Staring at it straight on for the first time, the Doctor felt the telltale involuntary shift in his attention and had to force himself to focus on the lift. Definitely a perception filter then. Damn.

Grimly, he took the stairs two at a time, knowing what he was likely to find, or rather not find, when he got to the laboratory. There was no sign of any of the other team members; he checked as he passed Whetu and Oskar's doors. He pressed the door to the lab open cautiously, blinking as the room's motion sensors tripped and the lights flickered on. They revealed what the Doctor had feared, the workbench before him stood conspicuously absent one vortex manipulator.

The Doctor whirled about and ran back down the hall, maybe Richard had just taken the device up to his office. Fear clenched in his stomach now as he found the man's office empty. He wasn't in the team's lounge either or on the roof. He'd run out of places to look; it was time to check the lift.

Once you knew it was there, the perception filter on the lift was much easier to resist, but the Doctor had to admit it was a particularly strong one. He caught himself wondering more than once as he approached the entrance what good he thought stepping into an old broken lift was going to do him. Pushing past the mental compulsion, he got in and hit the button his clouded instincts told him was absolutely _not_ anything special. An overhead light came on and the doors shuddered closed. There was a lurch and faint whirring sound as the lift began to descend.

Rather doubting he had much remaining in the element of surprise, the Doctor did his best to affect an air of nonchalance before the doors opened. He flipped his coat behind him, tucking both hands into his pockets and hid his worry behind a blank mask of seriousness. He was as ready for this confrontation as he could be, under the circumstances. He just hoped he hadn't arrived too late.

The doors slid open, revealing a softly lit, utilitarian white room lined with banks of monitors and sleek control panels, Gallifreyan symbols scrolling silently across them. The walls were curved with the equipment arranged around a central console. Heavy gauge wiring seemed to converge on this console, routed in a massive bundle down from the ceiling and across the room where it branched off, the majority of the wires disappearing into a portal in the far wall just above an open doorway.

The whole room hummed with energy and the Doctor stumbled as his time senses flared painfully back to life, screaming at him that this place was wrong and broken. He clutched at his head and staggered forward in to the room, catching himself on the console. He grimaced and contemplated the irony that he'd been missing this for over two months now and as soon as he'd got it back, wanted nothing more than the muffled oblivion of its absence again.

The Doctor was too preoccupied with piecing his mental barriers back together so that he could function normally to notice two very important things. First, that Richard Strahm had entered the room from the aforementioned open doorway holding a Deturian disrupter pistol. And second, that when the Doctor's hands had come in contact with the console, every single piece of electronic equipment in the room surged with power, coming out of passive hibernation mode with dazzling swiftness.

* * *

Outside, the barrier surrounding the city crackled with energy, disrupting the familiar ribbon of Corazón's aurora and alarming the residents still awake to see it. The air felt heavy and metallic in the way it sometimes did if you happened to be standing nearby when new residents were transported in. Nervously, they watched the skies.

Back in their flat, Rose, who had been sleeping soundly after what she hoped would be the first of many repeat performances of the Doctor's newly discovered... _talents_, sat up abruptly in the bed.

"Doctor," she breathed, a golden glow streaming from her eyes.


	18. Understanding

**Chapter 18**

In the sterile white control room, the Doctor fought against an overwhelming instinctual urge to flee; he'd stumbled into not just a critical juncture in time, but a fractured one. He leaned heavily against the console as the timelines around them twisted and snapped, fluctuating wildly. The situation was much worse than he'd feared. Whatever Time Lord creation lay preserved deep within this mysterious city had the potential to be catastrophic on a galactic scale.

The Doctor's internal monologue was interrupted by the unmistakable whine that the safety mechanism of a disrupter pistol makes while being deactivated. Still reeling from the shock caused by the abrupt return of his time senses, he straightened and composed himself as quickly as possible. This was not the dignified entrance he'd intended. Hardly the first time it'd happened, but it was still a bit of a blow to his ego.

Richard was staring at the Doctor as though he wasn't quite sure what to make of him but his grip on the disrupter didn't falter. The Doctor noticed he was wearing the vortex manipulator on his wrist.

"Doctor. How did... What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I should ask you the same thing," came the Doctor's reply. "I thought we shared a common goal, but it turns out, you've been keeping secrets from us all, haven't you?"

Richard didn't respond.

"I'd really prefer if we just talked. Could we do that? Without the weapon maybe? I've never been very chatty with a gun pointed at my head. Weeeeell, that's not _strictly_ true, since as it happens this gob of mine tends to get _worse_ in these sorts of situations, but I've never enjoyed it. The being held a gunpoint part, not the talking, obviously. Love the talking."

Richard gave him a look that suggested he was questioning the Doctor's sanity; a look that, oddly enough, he happened to get a lot. He lowered the gun slightly but kept it unambiguously aimed at the Doctor's chest. "Enough havering. Tell me how you got in here and what you've done to the controls."

The Doctor glanced around and finally noticed that the room had gotten significantly brighter as all of the electronics surrounding them had come to life. The monitors that lay dormant as he'd entered now displayed strings of numbers and video feeds from various locations throughout the city. He did not like what he saw.

The Doctor shook his head. "I didn't do anything. And I got here the same way as you, I expect. I took the lift." He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.

"Don't lie to me Doctor. It took me over a year to find this place and I've been trying to get it running for nearly four. You waltz right through a level 9 perception filter and then expect me to believe it simply powered itself on when you arrived?"

The Doctor shrugged. He really hadn't done anything with the controls, just touched the console... A thought occurred to him. Time to change the subject; he was here for answers.

"I wasn't the only one to see through the perception filter though, was I? What happened to Chantrea, Richard?"

Richard took a step backwards in surprise. "Is that how you found it? Did _she_ tell you?"

He shook his head again. "Is that why you killed her then? So she couldn't tell anyone what you've been doing?"

"I didn't. I didn't mean to kill her. It was _an accident_. We were arguing, things got heated, she threatened me. She didn't understand..." He looked haunted at the memory.

"She didn't understand what?" the Doctor prodded him.

Richard narrowed his eyes at him. "Who are you really? You've been in this city for just two months, you seem to know a staggering amount about temporal mechanics, and you've managed to build equipment more sophisticated than we thought possible with _years _of work."

"I'm the Doctor, just the Doctor. Mind you, there are a few places in this universe where that means a bit more to people, but right now I simply want to get back home to my ship, same as you. Unless that's what this is about; have you kept this discovery a secret because you'd rather we all stayed here?"

Richard laughed mirthlessly. "No. Going home is _exactly_ what this is all about." Seeing the Doctor's confused expression, he continued. "You don't know what Corazón Perdido really is, do you?"

"I have got an inkling," the Doctor replied, defensively.

Richard stepped to the side and gestured with the pistol for the Doctor to precede him to the adjacent room. "You'll be wanting to see this."

Ignoring the portion of his brain that told him the very last thing he wanted to do was get any closer to whatever lurked beyond that doorway, the Doctor complied. As soon as he'd stepped past the threshold, he wished he hadn't though. Before him, flooding the small room with a sickly yellow colour wash, sat the butchered remains of a TARDIS console.

He staggered as a wave of psychic miasma rolled over his senses; this TARDIS was still alive and crying out in pain. The thick bundle of heavy wiring from the other room fed directly into the console and partially obscured his view of the time rotor from this angle. It looked like one of the older models, like his own, that had been drafted back in to service and retrofit for the war. Forgetting Richard and his pistol entirely, the Doctor walked up to place his hands on the ailing machine.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he murmured, stroking its panels gently. "How could they do this to you? I'll find a way to make it stop, I promise." At his touch, the feeble light from the time rotor glowed brighter and he caught the faintest flicker of hope from the TARDIS in his mind.

The Doctor turned to face Richard, rage at his own people for finding new levels of barbarism to stoop to in the name of winning the Time War spilling over into his dark eyes. The Daleks hadn't called him the Oncoming Storm for nothing. Richard jerked back from him, his racing thoughts evident on his face. Fear soon gave way to realisation and anger though.

"_You_. You're one of them! That's why the equipment turned on, you're bloody one of them!" he accused. "I thought all of you selfish bastards died in the war," he hissed, "the wise and mighty Time Lords, 'Protectors' of the Universe. The people of Ellohem were only worth keeping around when we could supply you with parts for your time ships. But the moment the Daleks set their sights on our home world, you abandoned all pretense of _protection_."

The Doctor didn't bother to deny it. Ellohem hadn't been his decision, but neither was he guiltless in its ultimate fate. Besides, he was the last man to defend the Time Lords against charges of hypocrisy.

Decades of unspent rage fueling his words, Richard continued his tirade. "As I'm sure you've guessed, what you see before you is the last remnant of that ugly war. And as my luck would have it, my best hope of ever seeing my friends and family again. This machine, this whole city was built to harness the temporal energies of all the residents to move _whole worlds_ through time, and if need be, erase them from existence entirely."

Horrified, the Doctor quickly grasped the implications of this. Suddenly, the panicked alarm blaring from his time senses seemed like an _under_ reaction.

"My father helped design the perceptual filters for this place. I don't think he was supposed to know what it was being built for, but their arrogance made them sloppy; they didn't expect a lowly engineer to put the pieces together. When the war got nearer and he feared the worst, my father sent me everything he could, in the hope that I might be able to save them all if the weapon survived."

The larger man cut an imposing figure with his beard and hair seeming to glow as they were illuminated by the time rotor. He stepped closer to the Doctor, anger adding extra menace to his movements. "It figures that I had to wait for one of you lot to show up before I could use it. Mustn't let the mere mortals play with your toys, eh?"

The Doctor stood his ground. He understood Richard's pain and anger at having lost his family and whole planet, really. But he also had no appreciation for just how dangerous his plan to resurrect Ellohem truly was.

"Richard, you can't just bring Ellohem back. Even if this machine works, at best, you risk creating a massive paradox, at worst... the entire war was sealed away behind a time lock before it led to the destruction of everything in the universe; you could break that lock open and release the horrors of the Time War with it."

Richard glowered at the Doctor. "I guess that's a risk I'm going to have to take. If need be, I'll use the machine again to end the war myself."

"You're not thinking clearly," the Doctor lectured, "the Time Lords built this as a weapon; if it could've been used to end the war so easily, why didn't they do it themselves, hmm?"

Upon reflection, the Doctor probably should've seen the punch coming.


	19. Lost Heart

**Chapter 19  
**

Richard had hit him hard enough to knock him back against the hard metal edge of the TARDIS console whereupon he collapsed in a stunned heap on the unforgiving floor. He worked his jaw painfully and could feel what would no doubt become a rather spectacular bruise developing on his lower back. That, perhaps, could have gone better, the Doctor mused.

Never one to learn his lessons properly the first time, his immediate response was to quip sarcastically that the enraged scientist had clearly missed a calling as a brawler. Richard reacted with a lunge and the Doctor swiftly found himself thoroughly restrained; his hands bound tightly with a power cord and secured to a sturdy metal railing near the doorway. The Doctor thrashed about some ineffectually before giving it up and shifting awkwardly around to peer into the other room to see where Richard had gotten to.

The scientist had returned to the white control room and, for someone who should have very little understanding of written Gallifreyan, but had admittedly had plenty of time to begin deciphering it in the years he'd been stuck here, was doing a disconcertingly excellent job of setting the targeting systems for Ellohem. He'd better think of something fast or Richard was going to make good on his threat to use the Time Lord weapon. Talking to the man hadn't exactly worked so far, but the Doctor didn't really have any other options available to him at the moment.

"Richard, wait!" he called. "I should've worded that differently. What happened on Ellohem, it was a tragedy, and it shouldn't have happened. The Time Lords left your planet to the mercy of the Daleks and there's no amount of apologizing I can do to make up for that. Still, for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Richard looked over at him but didn't step away from the computer panel. His eyes were still hard with anger.

"I know you miss them, that you'd do anything to see them again. Believe me, I understand, I do. You're not the only one in this room who lost someone to the Time War. I wasn't lying before, when we spoke on the roof. I'm the only one left. My family, my friends, even my planet, burned in that terrible war." He caught Richard's gaze with his own. "If there was a way to safely bring them all back, to undo everything, don't you think I'd jump at the chance to help you?"

Richard was the first to break the eye contact, looking down at the instrument panel read-outs in front of him. For a moment the Doctor thought it had worked, that he was listening to him, or at least considering that what he was saying was the truth.

"I have to at least try," Richard said quietly with despair in his voice and pressed a key.

The two chambers shook violently and the time rotor behind the Doctor lurched into action, abandoning its previous slow motion drift to pulse at an alarming rate. The Doctor yelled for him to stop but his protests were lost in the din as the TARDIS-weapon armed itself. Frantic, the Doctor struggled to twist in place enough to gain access to his coat pocket. He had to get loose before Richard managed to kill them all and take the rest of the universe with them. If the numbers ticking down in Gallifreyan script on all of the screens were an indication, he hadn't much time.

Above their hidden bunker, the barrier surrounding the city glowed with energy, artificially induced lightning crackling across its surface, occasionally branching down to strike buildings or trees below. Tiny bursts of static formed around every single resident, the charge in the air making their hair stand on end and clothing cling tightly to bodies. The power dimmed and shorted out, plunging the frightened residents into inky blackness, punctuated only by flashes of light and the accompanying sharp cracks and rumbles of thunder.

Across the dark city streets, a solitary blonde figure ran full tilt towards the science building, never hesitating in her steps despite the uneven footing and poor visibility. Her eyes glow with a golden inner light and she follows a call only she can hear. The Doctor may have taken the vortex from her but a piece of the Bad Wolf will always remain. It is that tiny sliver that recognizes her sister TARDIS' pain and heard her cries of distress. When the control matrix powered up, the warning it had been sending her finally crystallized in her dreams and awoke the power within her, guiding her to the heart of the city.

Inside the science building, she heads directly for the lift, pressing the correct button without flinching, even though the cage shakes around her. Her Doctor is in danger and Rose Tyler will always protect him.

The noise in the control room is being rivaled by the clamor inside his head as the Doctor's once dormant time senses howl in agony. The part of him that is still lucid enough to form complete thoughts wonders how the hell any Time Lords had even considered using this during the war, if it had this effect on him now. He really hadn't even been one of the most time sensitive of his people, though he did have a particular knack for finding tipping points in history. This machine, this engine of temporal destruction, was tearing at the fabric of reality, and it hadn't even been fired yet.

Richard was running from panel to panel, anxiously checking readings and setting parameters when the door to the lift slid open. If he had been expecting anything to happen in the next few moments, it would not have been the arrival of the Doctor's human companion, standing with burning eyes in her nightshirt like an avenging angel. He barely had the time to think to raise his disrupter pistol when she marched up to him and took it from his hands. She tossed it aside carelessly and reached up to place her hand against the perplexed man's forehead. He dropped like a stone to the floor, unconscious.

The Doctor watched in shocked silence as Rose walked over to him, timelines around her snapping back in to place as the golden glow slowly faded from her eyes.

"Rose?" he asked in disbelief as she knelt beside him and began to work on unraveling his bindings.

Her eyes lifted to meet his and the Doctor was relieved to see they'd returned to their normal hue. "Yes, Doctor. It's just me." She smiled at him and tugged the last bit of cord free from his wrists.

He pulled her in for a quick kiss and then scrambled to his feet to shut down the firing sequence. The countdown halted and he allowed himself a sigh of relief before bending to check on Richard.

"What did you do to him? Never mind that, _how_ did you do this to him? And how did you find me?" he asked Rose, who looked just as confused as he was.

She shrugged. "I'm not really sure; I just had to stop him, but I didn't really want to hurt him. I think... I think the TARDIS told me where you were."

His eyes widened at this and he turned to stare at the yellow time rotor, now sitting quietly in the adjacent room. It wasn't impossible, just... highly unlikely. Though, at this point, the Doctor thought he probably ought to stop being surprised every time Rose did something nearly impossible and amazing.

Together they managed to get Richard in the lift and up to the cot in his office. They left him tied to it lest he wake before the Doctor was able to fully disable the temporal weapon and interfere further. The Doctor wasn't sure what the city's police would do with the man in the morning, but that was a concern for later. He reclaimed the vortex manipulator from the sleeping man's wrist; they might need it.

Back in the secret basement, the Doctor was able to give the equipment and abused TARDIS a more thorough examination. His mood grew more and more dismal as the solution occurred to him. There was a way to release them all from their imprisonment in this city and guarantee that it would never be used as a weapon again, but it would mean killing the TARDIS, and very possibly himself in the process. He could wire up the vortex manipulator to cause a looping feedback fault that should overload the system and cause a rupture in the matrix containment system that would fold back on itself. The Daleks had used a similar technique during the war to destroy TARDISes without blowing a hole in the space time continuum. It was crude, but effective.

Once the temporal field encasing them destabilized, everyone within the city barriers would snap back to where they'd been before they'd been transported. Including, he hoped, himself and Rose. For many of them, it would mean turning back the clock twenty years. For himself...

He knew what Rose would say, that most of these people had built their lives here, that the only thing waiting for them back on the other side was uncertainty or even imminent death. He racked his brain, searching for any alternative, even probing the timelines as best he could, trying to see another answer that would still prevent the weapon from falling into the wrong hands.

As Richard had proved, and the Doctor was already quite aware, even well intentioned actors could do something catastrophic with this technology at their disposal. If he left it intact, it would remain a threat and he'd never get back to his own TARDIS, which currently sat undefended on a tiny world at the outskirts of the galaxy but not far enough a field to avoid curious wanderers like himself and the others who'd been pulled inside the city while investigating its mysteries.

In a way, it was Rose that made the decision for him. He found her in the other room, stroking the TARDIS console and offering it whispered words of comfort. He could hear the living machine's pain at the edges of his mind and evidently Rose could too. It was never meant to be used like this and the discontinuity of all the timelines it held within its temporal barriers was the metaphorical equivalent of squeezing a handful of glass shards. The Time Lords had damaged this beautiful ship beyond repair and left it alone to suffer, long after their war had ended.

He placed his own hands on the console over Rose's and told the ancient being what he planned to do. He felt its assent reverberate deep inside and Rose looked at him with tears and understanding in her eyes.

Once he'd committed himself to the plan, the actual work to wire up the device was actually fairly straightforward. He finished in just a few minutes and then spent another twenty checking and rechecking his work. He knew he was just stalling.

Finally, he decided he had to stop delaying the inevitable. He took Rose's hand and walked her back to the lift.

"You shouldn't be here, just in case it doesn't work properly; I want you safe." She started to protest but he silenced her with a kiss. "Please Rose, for me. I'll be right behind you, I promise. I can regenerate if I have to, you can't."

He took a shaky breath and glanced nervously behind him. "Don't worry about me. This will work and we'll be back to two months ago, safe and sound near our own TARDIS. I'll take you to that planet with the musical waterfalls I've been promising you. Everything's going to be fine," he lied.

Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her for all he was worth, stopping only when she broke the kiss to gasp for air. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring grin and brushed her hair back from her face. She gave him another slow kiss and then stepped backwards on to the lift and pressed the lobby button.

"See you in a few then. Be careful Doctor, I love you!" she called.

She had enough time before the doors closed to see the Doctor's face as his forced smile disappeared and he watched her go like a man about to walk to his own execution.

He returned to the TARDIS console room with a grim determination. He'd delayed long enough, and if he waited too much longer, Rose would start to worry. He didn't want her coming back down to check on him.

The Doctor drew a deep breath and willed himself to take the final step towards the device. If he did this, if it worked, then none of this would ever have happened. It'd be wiped clean from existence, and no one would ever know the difference. Well, he might. But she wouldn't and he'd rather not remember at all than look into her eyes and see none of what they'd shared together reflected back at him. If he made it out alive, he'd lock the memories away, let them join the worst of the Time War in the dark corners of his mind where he stuffed everything that hurt too much to know.

There wasn't any way around it though. It had to be done. His feelings weren't more important than the safety of the entire universe.

He stepped forward and triggered the device.

At first, nothing happened. Then there was a deafening 'CRACK!' and the whole city shuddered. The temporal field around the butchered TARDIS console started to destabilize, distorting the light around the machine as time sped up and slowed down in uneven sections. The shaking grew in intensity and the Doctor rather wisely decided that this was a good time to run.

Deep inside the heart of Corazón Perdido, the dark secret of the Time Lords' desperation in the Last Great Time War went into full cascading failure and collapsed in on itself. There was a terrible pause during which 4,372 beings held their breath and then everything went black.


	20. Ouroboros

**Chapter 20 - Ouroboros **

The Doctor woke to a mouthful of gritty blue dust. He felt giddy and his head and body ached as though he'd just been forcibly shunted through the galaxy's worst transmat, _twice_. His time senses were reeling from what had felt like a concentrated burst of temporal energies being released like a flash grenade right in front of him. He was honestly surprised to find himself still breathing and both hearts still beating.

Groaning, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees and looked around for Rose. He spotted her clutching her own head, sprawled awkwardly a short distance from him. The Doctor lurched to his feet and wavered unsteadily over to her, nearly taking another undignified tumble into the dirt when he tripped over the rather lengthy scarf that had slipped down from his face and now trailed along the ground. How his earlier regeneration had managed not to injure himself wearing the blasted thing for so many years was beyond him.

Around them the high winds still howled, swirling dust between the ominous black pillars that stood guard over the otherwise featureless landscape. The Doctor knelt next to Rose, frantically checking her for injuries. He had no idea what they'd stumbled on to and feared the damage a temporal blast powerful enough to incapacitate him might have done to her human body.

When he found nothing obviously broken, he pulled her close into a tight hug. She hugged him back, her breath warm against his chest, content to hold him. They stayed like that for a minute and then she shifted in his arms to examine him and abruptly squirmed to get free. He relented, not understanding her horrified look until she reached out to touch the side of his neck and pulled back fingers slick with red. Blood. His, specifically.

That was the point at which the Doctor realised she'd been speaking to him. He could see her mouth moving, partially obscured by a dirty pink bandana as it was, but none of her words had reached him. That roaring sound he'd been hearing wasn't just the wind. He brought his own hands up to check and verified that yes, the bleeding was coming from his ears. The phrase _bloody hell_ seemed rather appropriate. They needed to get back to the TARDIS med bay.

Able only to feel the rumble of his voice in his throat, he assured her with as much confidence as he could muster that he'd be all right as he picked himself up off of the ground again. Rose declined his offer to help her up as well, giving him a dubious look regarding his suggestion that he was in any way more stable that she at the moment. He supposed he could grant her that and set about searching the area for his sonic screwdriver. He'd been carrying it when the blast hit, he was sure of it.

He found it laying next to a rock not far from where he'd fallen and flicked it on to be sure it was still in working order. No harm done it seemed, just a bit dusty. Frowning, he scanned around them. No sign of the mysterious energy signature they'd been chasing. He was getting perfectly ordinary readings now. No horrible writhing timelines in his head either. He walked up to the nearest pillar and placed his hand against it. Nothing but smooth, cool stone. What had happened here?

His contemplation was interrupted when Rose took his arm insistently and it occurred to him that she must've been calling to him. Reluctantly, he let himself be led away from the pillar and back towards their TARDIS. He had an unpleasant sense that this was going to be one of those mysteries of the universe that remained frustratingly unsolved.

Back in the TARDIS, the living machine seemed unusually pleased to have them back, sending him a warm pulse of greeting in his mind when they stepped inside. This worried the Doctor. They'd only been gone for, he calculated, one hour thirty six minutes and twelve seconds. He found the medical bay had been moved up closest to the console room and sent a silent thank you to his faithful ship, always taking care of him. He retrieved the tissue regenerator from a drawer and explained to Rose in a voice that was probably too loud, given the way she cringed and put a hand to his lips, which setting she should use on him.

Rose made him sit down on one of the examination tables. He shrugged out of his coat and pulled off the goggles and scarf to get them out of the way. She looked so worried as she held the regenerator to each of his ears; the Doctor tried not to wince when his ear drums popped and the dull roar was replaced with the suddenly very loud ambient sounds of the TARDIS. He worked his jaw experimentally and tugged at both earlobes before meeting Rose's eyes.

"That's better. Hello again."

Rose looked supremely relieved. "You can hear me again?"

He nodded and she flung herself into him. "Thank goodness! You scared me out there Doctor. What _was_ that?"

The Doctor pulled back from the embrace and gently swept the hair and dust from her face as though he could brush away her worry as well, leaving his hand cupping her cheek as he answered her. "I'm not really sure. I think we may have accidentally set off... well, _literally_ a time bomb."

"A _time_ bomb. Like it was put there specifically for someone like a Time Lord? That why you're the only one it really hurt?" she asked.

"Maybe. Whatever it was, released a great deal of temporal energy very rapidly. We're lucky we weren't killed, or worse."

"What would be worse?"

"That much temporal energy? Could've ripped open a hole to the vortex or time shifted us away from the TARDIS. We might've been trapped on this dusty planet with no food or shelter, hundreds or thousands of years from the ship." That was a rather chilling thought. Rose's eyes widened as she considered this possibility. The Doctor reflected that perhaps it might've been better if he had lied; he'd alarmed her enough today.

"Oh," was all she could say.

He really was holding her quite closely. The casual intimacy of their proximity occurred to the both of them at the same time. Rose bit her lower lip and flicked her eyes from his hand back to his face. The Doctor swallowed and leaned in hesitantly. He'd been going to say something else, what was it?

"Let's..." he licked his lips nervously, "let's just be glad that didn't happen."

"Doctor...?" she asked softly, positive that she was imagining that he was doing what she thought he was about to do.

He almost did it too. But at the last second, he blinked and retreated, like he always did, instead placing a chaste kiss on her forehead before standing and wrapping his arms around her in a full body hug. He ended it with a firm squeeze and released her saying, "Thank you, Rose Tyler. Where would I be without you?"

She laughed and gave him that devastating smile of hers where her tongue peeked out from between her teeth. It was enough that he cared about her, she told herself and followed him back in to the control room.

That night, as the TARDIS drifted peacefully in the vortex, the Doctor lay on his side with Rose curled up against his chest in her dark bedroom. He listened to the hum of the ship and the soft sound of her breathing as it slowed to the steady rhythm that he recognized as indicating that she'd fallen asleep. He ought to get up; the helmic regulator had been sticking a bit lately and he'd been meaning to have a look at it. Maybe he'd stay just a little longer though, he really was quite tired after the shock he'd had to his system from that blast.

He woke two hours later, unsettled by the dream he'd had. It had felt eerily real, but of course, it had never happened. Amidst the normal blur of images there'd been a brilliant, vivid sense impression of pressing Rose up against a rough brick wall and kissing her deeply and thoroughly. It was... disconcerting to say the least. The Doctor spent the rest of the night laying awake, staring at the vaulted coral ceiling, thinking.

* * *

_Elsewhere in time._

Aboard the luxury starliner Bon Venture, Chantrea Relliong frowns at the readings on her vortex manipulator. There'd definitely been a blip. Whatever it had been though, it had disappeared nearly instantaneously. She sighs. The Agency had had her here for three weeks, tracking a temporal anomaly involving the starliner's disappearance and this had been the first and only oddity she'd encountered thus far.

She'd stay for one more day; if nothing else registered, then it seemed likely that she'd found an answer to the mystery, just a strange hiccough in the fabric of space time, nothing more. How disappointing. The director was going to be annoyed when she told him that the intel had been wrong. Still, she'd be glad to get off of this ship; with the FTL drives still out of commission, the passengers and crew were beginning to panic. The situation could rapidly become dangerous if she remained. This was the worst part of her job, watching as people suffered and sometimes died but unable to interfere with established events.

Maybe it was about time she started thinking about retirement. Things hadn't really been the same at the Time Agency since the Incident and any agent worth her salt could see the writing on the wall. She just needed to find a nice, quiet world to settle down on with her books and painting supplies. It would take some careful preparation as well, as she wasn't particularly keen on the idea of parting ways with chunks of her memory. Not everyone who left the Agency managed to do so with their mind intact. Beyond that, it was really mostly just a matter of finding the right moment to slip away.

She snaps the cover of her manipulator closed and marches purposefully out of the room. She still has time to run several more scans for her report; she can worry about the future later.

* * *

The crew of the Starship Hawking stand on the surface of a dusty blue grey planet watching their colleague perform his eighteenth scan of the tall dark monument before them to the same result.

"Richard," Commander Bracewell's voice calls over their comm system, "whatever it was, it isn't here any more. We should be getting back to the ship. The Captain's getting impatient waiting on us."

Richard Strahm slumps his shoulders and returns his scanner to its holster on his atmospheric stabilization suit. He looks forlornly at the enigmatic black structures. "We all felt that energy pulse. These things were put here to do something."

"I know. But we're behind schedule as it is; you'll have to come back when we've got more time to investigate properly." Her voice is apologetic.

The six crewmembers turn and walk back to their waiting ship. When it departs, the surface is silent again, save for the wind.

* * *

_**a/n - I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. But this was how it was always going to end. **_

_**I hope all of you enjoyed this story. Thank you to everyone for the follows, favorites, and comments thus far; your support has been very encouraging. I will be writing more stories as time and inspiration permit. If you've made it all this way, I'd love it if you left a note telling me what you thought. **_


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